Morris, whose parents enrolled him in grief management at the hospital, was one of the beneficiaries of the Dreams*2Gather program run by the nonprofit Love Our Kids Foundation. The program helps young patients fulfill wishes that may be prevented for physical or psychological reasons. conditions.
With the help of volunteers, several startups and technology companies are lending their expertise to create AI versions of deceased loved ones, and beneficiaries' families can also participate in the process.
The recreation was an opportunity for Morris to tap into the love he had for his late brother, his mother said.
“I was really touched when Morris cried.” [upon seeing the recreation],” she said. “I didn't know that his love was still there after so long.”
The 41-year-old former piano teacher added that she chose to portray Yat Rai as a toddler learning how to walk because, had he survived, that would have been the next stage in his life.
Yatrai, a mother of three, died of an autoimmune disease, first diagnosed during the pandemic after months of ineffective medical tests and persistent pneumonia.
He died in February 2020 at the age of 7 months, just as he was about to receive treatment.
Due to social distancing regulations imposed due to the pandemic, only two people, Yatrai's mother and father, were allowed to visit her in the ward.
They had decided not to tell the rest of his family about his final moments so as not to show his illness to his family.
However, the decision became a lingering regret for the family, especially Morris.
In addition to creating a depiction of Yatrai, volunteers used artificial intelligence to reconstruct the image and voice of her late mother. Her adult and teenage daughters could see and hear their mothers answering letters written by volunteers.
The mother praised her young daughters for working hard to survive and for providing emotional support to the entire family even after her death.
Professor Lee Tan, vice dean of education at the Faculty of Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, restored women's voices.
Entrepreneur Tom Tong Kwun-wah created her facial expressions, and Lawrence Cheung Cheong-ming, head of customer and product support for HTC's virtual reality division, built the virtual reality living room in which she will be placed. .
Tong said most software is designed for English speakers, so generating accurate mouth movements for Cantonese pronunciation is a challenge.
In order to create a fluent one-minute speech, Lee had to process recorded phrases of less than a minute long, but given the emotion involved, the technical challenges He said it was pointless.
“For example, if we could technically improve the recording by a factor of 10, would the family feel like it was better?” Lee said. “Technical proficiency cannot be equated with family feelings.”
He said his team's product could capture a mother's accent and voice, but it could be better at imitating her rhythm.
Lee's startup Vocofy AI has developed a text-to-speech model that preserves the original voices of people who have lost the ability to speak, but his team typically does not reproduce the voices of the dead due to ethical considerations. He said he would refuse any personal requests. Concerns.
But moved by his daughters' stories and learning that they had agreed to a limited reproduction of their mother's voices, he took on the family's project.
“I feel relieved. This is what motivates me to continue working,” Lee said. “For me, it's not the technical ability that matters, but rather how well the technology is used.”
