[infurl]

https://idle.slashdot.org/story/21/01/09/0558234/can-chatbots-simulate-conversations-with-dead-people

The author of the book Online Afterlives describes the unusual projects of people like Eugenia Kuyda, co-founder of Luka, an AI-powered chat simulator that books restaurant reservations and makes recommendations. Kuyda worked with computer scientists to convert several thousand text messages between deceased tech entrepreneur Roman Mazurenko and his friends and relatives into a chatbot simulation.

There have been several movies and at least one episode of Black Mirror made about this topic so it's on a lot of people's minds. I haven't felt the need to try any of these platforms or services myself. However I still miss my dog and if someone could simulate him well enough, I would love to have that beside me again.

[HS]

My younger brother and I have been trying out his new Oculus headset. One day I was browsing the menu and found an app where you can take care of a virtual pet, it was pretty realistic even though it was a free app. We both thought it was amazing. I'm thinking VR could be a great way to enhance these text based conversations. Robotics probably won't be ready for a century, maybe even longer than that, but by the sound of it these text generation programs are already quite good, and so is virtual reality. When combined, I think this has the potential to work quite well.