Some people have toyed with the idea of what it would be like to live forever and now it looks like the concept might soon come to fruition...sort of.
A metaverse company is setting up a virtual world and it has a fascinating mode that allows the user to 'live forever'.
This is some proper Black Mirror stuff right here and it could be a massive step forward in our dealings with virtual reality if it ends up working.
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Artur Sychov was motivated to create his digital universe after his father was diagnosed with cancer.
He was worried that his young children might not get to know their grandfather before he died.
So, he came up with an ingenious way for people to live on well after they've passed away.
Sychov is the founder of Somnium Space and his company has been working on a way to record your conversations, speaking voice, mannerisms and even your movements.
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It's hoped this data will be turned into a virtual avatar that you can visit inside the Somnium metaverse.
Once you're in this digital world, you could be able to interact with and speak to people who might not longer be with us on the planet.
Artur told Vice News that the 'Live Forever' mode might allow us to never miss our dead friends or family members because we could have a conversation with them whenever we wanted.
“Literally, if I die—and I have this data collected—people can come or my kids, they can come in, and they can have a conversation with my avatar, with my movements, with my voice,” he explained.
“You will meet the person. And you would maybe for the first 10 minutes while talking to that person, you would not know that it's actually AI. That’s the goal.”
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The cool thing about Somnium Space is that it's already compatible with this generation's array of virtual reality headsets.
You might be thinking that it would be difficult to capture all the data needed to create a virtual version of an individual.
However, Artur reveals there's so much that can be analysed in VR.
“The amount of data we potentially could record about you is probably on the magnitude of, I'd say realistically, 100-to-300 times more than when you're on a mobile phone,” he said to Vice.
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It's a pretty incredible tool and one that many would probably use in order to speak to loved ones who might have passed years ago.
Watch this space.
Topics: Technology
Stewart Perrie