Could AI help you tell your story? That's the idea behind a startup called Autobiographer. Autobiographer uses AI technology to engage in meaningful conversations with users about events in their life and their thoughts about them, then converts them into prose, essentially creating their own autobiography.
The startup is dabbling in controversial territory: Many balk at the idea of AI replacing art, writing, or other creative endeavors. But in Autobiographer's case, the AI guides users in telling their own story in their own words, then compiles that output into a PDF that can be exported and, one day, bound and printed. In other words, Autobiographer functions more as a collaborator than a sole creator.
While the app may not be a replacement for a professionally handwritten story, it could be useful as a way to record family history and friendships, or create keepsakes for children.
Matt Bowman, co-founder and CEO of Autobiographer, sees the app as a way to preserve his story for his godparents. Before working at Facebook in the Bay Area, Bowman served in the Army Special Forces and deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, where he experienced losses that shaped his view of the world.
“I have so many great stories about my friends who were in the military. So many funny, unique, amazing things, a lot of which I heard at funerals of some of my best friends. Now my job is to figure out how to compile them and share them with my godparents,” Bowman said, who hopes to help his godparents learn more about his father, his life in the military and what kind of person he was.
“Technology has gotten to the point now where that's possible,” Bowman explains, “so we can actually tell these stories, tell them in words, and turn them into beautiful keepsakes to offer to those around us.”
Bowman teamed up with James Burns, who worked at Facebook throughout the 2016 and 2018 elections. Burns was known as one of the first to notice the Cambridge Analytica data collection scandal, which led to Bowman being involved in numerous testimonies and subpoenas. Bowman then left Facebook to start a super PAC to fight Trump. While playing around with OpenAI's GPT-3, he found that the artificial intelligence could help him process his own life experiences, including these milestones.
“The AI had an incredible capacity for reflection: looking at myself, my story, my events,” Burns says.
Though Burns and Bowman didn't work at Facebook at the same time, they met last year in San Francisco, when Burns was looking for someone with military expertise to help his team (which also includes co-founders Luke Schoenfelder and Ivan Almaral) experiment with an idea for using AI for storytelling. The two bonded over their shared goals and other experiences, including an interest in psychedelic drugs.
“Exploring consciousness was an important intersection for us,” Burns explains. “Working on something so concrete also allows us to think about the platform's ability to enable people to introspect and do more abstract, personal work,” he says.
To use the app, you converse with an AI agent built on Anthropic technology, prompting it to tell a story. For example, the first prompt asks you to tell a story about an adventure you had, and reminds you that there are no right or wrong answers. You can start speaking, pause and resume the recording, or move on to another question as needed.
The memories are stored in a vault, a biometrically secured encrypted space that even Autobiographer staff cannot access.
“One of the most important values that James, Luke, Ivan and I came together with was the explicit understanding that what's being touted in advertising and what a bunch of engineers see on the backend doesn't represent what anyone has their own cherished memories and highly emotionally sensitive stories to tell,” says Bowman.
The app lets you revisit topics, explore memories, and eventually turn your writing into various kinds of prose, like short stories or thank-you letters to loved ones. For now, these are exported as PDFs, but the team hopes to offer printed books one day.
Autobiographer costs $199 per year, which is certainly cheaper than hiring a ghostwriter, but expensive enough to deter some people from purchasing it.
The company is also currently partnering with journalist Katie Couric, who will serve as a promotional partner for the startup, though her role has yet to be determined.
The company behind Autobiographer was founded three and a half years ago but has pivoted a few times: The latest version of the app being released today was launched a year ago.
Autobiographer has raised $4 million in pre-seed funding from a variety of companies.
