Live Forever, Digitally

With a little help from technology, people can create digital versions of themselves who will always be around.

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In various parts of the world, people are trying to make sure that those who are dead and gone should go on living digitally based on the data available about them. Of that, there is aplenty, and tech companies are trying to make use of it. Here is how it started. About three years ago, Eugenia Kuyda was devastated when her best friend Roman was killed in an accident. But she soon realised that all the text messages she had from Roman would reveal a lot about her friend and these could be used to create a chatbot that would respond just like him when engaged in a conversation. The chatbot was developed and Kuyda found solace in chatting with the digital version. In time, she was able to make it more content-generative, which means it can engage in new interactions not derived from the existing text messages. Plus, it was able to represent Roman’s vocabulary and tone of voi