Hangzhou boy used Griefbot to 'resurrection' his grandfather. It has been deleted now: he doesn't want to rely too much on AI.

In our photo album, there are photos and videos of our loved ones.

In our social media, there are voice strips of loved ones.

We also have booming AI technology - we and our loved ones have met in another way.

Siren has passed away

In 2020, a young Chinese software engineer in Hangzhou accidentally discovered an article about lip-sync technology.

The mechanism is very simple - a computer program is used to match mouth movements to speech recordings.

He immediately thought of his grandfather who had died ten years ago.

"Can I use this technology to say a few words to my grandfather again?" Yu Jialin asked himself.

In fact, this is not the first time we have tried to use the developed technology to reconstruct our deceased relatives.

With the help of various chat programs, facial recognition AI models, speech recognition, and action recognition models, plus the audio and video data of our loved ones saved, we can try to reproduce Characters and memories of deceased relatives.

Then you can "chat" with them again.

Yu Jialin is 29 years old this year. 12 years ago, his grandfather left him forever.

People always start to regret some things after their loved ones pass away. Yu Jialin remembers that one time his grandfather interrupted a game he was playing and he yelled at his grandfather.

Another time, Yu Jialin told his grandfather not to pick him up from school again.

It was little things like this that made him and his family miss their deceased grandfather so much.

Yu Jialin said that since his grandfather passed away, they have avoided mentioning him. In order not to let sadness occupy themselves, they choose to forget as much as possible.

Griefbot

Now, Griefbot is here.

This is an AI model that has been around for several years, and it can imitate humans by learning the various information we have about our deceased relatives.

But just last year, generative AI suddenly developed explosively, and Griefbot's performance was suddenly pushed to another level.

In the past Griefbot required a lot of data. Now, engineers like Yu Jialin can feed preserved data into this model and accurately recreate how they looked, spoke, and thought.

Foreign researchers say that today’s technology allows AI to reshape a person’s personality without too many samples.

Especially, coupled with systems like ChatGPT - they already have a good understanding of the way most people naturally speak or write.

Researchers said that after inputting the required information and fine-tuning the system, a 99% similarity can be achieved. There are no particularly obvious differences.

With this technology, Yu Jialin returned to his grandmother and found a lot of old letters belonging to his grandfather. The grandfather in the letters was the grandfather Yu Jialin had never met.

At the same time, he also found photos and videos taken by his grandfather more than ten years ago, as well as text messages his grandfather sent him.

Unfortunately, after several weeks of training and debugging, Yu Jialin's programming ability is still limited. It takes about 10 minutes to respond to each question during the interaction.

For example, he asked Griefbot, "Grandpa, guess who I am?"

Bot responded, "Who are you? It’s not important, life itself is a beautiful miracle.”

But giving more information to this Bot can still make the situation much better.

"Happy Teahouse has stopped broadcasting."

Grandpa said, "Yeah, what a pity. This is my favorite thing to watch. program, I originally wanted to watch a few more episodes."

At this point, Yu Jialin feels that this program has become increasingly mature. So, he showed the Bot to his grandma.

Yu Jialin's grandma quietly watched her husband answer her questions on the screen, with a hint of emotion in her eyes.

Yu Jialin said that he believed that this robot would become a good spiritual sustenance for his grandmother.

Faced with the reporter, Yu Jialin said that he did not want to share these conversations that only belonged to himself and his grandfather.

D-ID

In a video on station b, the up owner Wu Wuliu also restored the entire process of "resurrecting" grandma for us.

He first chose Midjourney, the current mainstream AI painting software, to generate a lifelike avatar of his grandma. AI generates some choices based on the uploaded pictures and text descriptions, and the UP owner selects the most realistic one based on the memories in his mind.

Then follow the same pattern and use text to refine certain facial features. Such as wrinkles, eyes, hairstyle and demeanor.

We can see that the current technology can already make the details of the generated avatar perfect.

The next step is audio. Again, these materials come from past phone recordings, video recordings or WeChat voices. Just like Yu Jialin, Wu Wuliu uploaded the audio of his past grandmother’s phone calls to the AI.

After that, he used the video editing software AU to make adjustments. And cut clearer audio samples into short sentences of several seconds to facilitate annotation.

Finally, package the processed audio and put it into the speech synthesis system.

Using the speech synthesis system, Wu Wuliu tried text-to-speech.

Now, the basic materials are complete. The next step is the most critical step - generating virtual digital people.

Through D-ID, users can generate digital virtual people and communicate with them.

Select your avatar on the left and upload text or audio on the right.

The image of grandma on the website is lifelike, and the audio also perfectly restores grandma’s “local accent”. Paired with the homely chat content on the right, it's like having a face-to-face video call with grandma.

What’s interesting is that these “responses” from grandma are also generated by ChatGPT.

Wu Wuliu told ChatGPT, "I miss my grandma very much. Can you imitate her tone to talk to me?"

Artificial intelligence with a human touch is hard not to move people to tears. With the help of memories of her grandmother, Wu Wuliu also tried her best to make ChatGPT more like her grandmother.

The ultimate goal of technology is to provide power to people. This power is not only material, but more importantly, spiritual. Although these chat contents are not completely anthropomorphic, there are also some inappropriate expressions.

But in general, the small details in life can still give people the most tender experience.

Grief sustenance in the new era

An expert in Boston said that with the development of new technology, As time passes, the way people express their grief will certainly change.

In the 1980s, people might write stories about their loved ones to commemorate them. Nowadays, saving electronic data is even more common.

Psychologists often help bereaved clients talk to an empty chair as if their loved one is still sitting in it.

Of course, the new changes brought about by new technologies are not necessarily a good thing.

At that time, Wu Wuliu’s video caused widespread discussion on station b.

The practice of turning deceased relatives into virtual digital beings is still a new thing. The change in perspective is not that easy.

Some netizens said that after all, digital virtual people cannot be the spiritual sustenance of those who commemorate him.

Even, there may be over-reliance on AI.

Because of this, Yu Jialin has deleted the robot that reshaped his grandfather.

He said that he did not want to be overly immersed in the past, let alone holding AI all day long.

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