This AI service lets you speak to deceased loved ones.
Plus, Microsoft adding OpenAI products to Office suite.
In today’s email:
The line between "Black Mirror episode” and “real life” are becoming more blurry, as this AI service lets you speak to deceased loved ones.
Microsoft has bigger plans for OpenAI than just their search platform, as integrations with their Office suite become more available.
Look out for this ChatGPT scam in the app store.
😎 3 Cool Things
There’s a lot of talk about AI entering the world of search, but what would that look like visually? Neeva has a pretty good example.
Redditor u/MobileFilmmaker created 3 comics and 3 mangas with Midjourney in 3 months. They look amazing.
🚨 This isn’t cool, but you should know about this. Someone is scamming people with a ChatGPT app for $7.99 a week. Don’t buy it. It’s a free tool.
🤓 2 Big Stories about AI
This AI service lets you speak to deceased loved ones
There’s an episode of Black Mirror called Be Right Back that feels like it’s coming to life. In the episode, Martha’s boyfriend Ash is killed in a car accident. As she mourns his death, she discovers that there’s technology available that allows her to communicate with an AI imitating Ash, and decides to try it out. I’ll stop before I spoil the ending.
But, thanks to the Korean company Deep Brain AI, life is now imitating art.
The 🥩 of it:
Deep Brain AI has created a service called Re;memory that allows users to converse with their deceased loved ones through AI-powered virtual humans.
The virtual humans mimic the appearance, voice, and expressions of the deceased and can be interacted with in real-time. The AI is being trained off of photos and videos that relatives and friends upload after the passing of their loved ones.
Re;memory offers a private virtual meeting with the AI human for a 30-minute conversation, and also offers a service that delivers a video message on special occasions likes birthdays, anniversaries, etc.
The service can also be used to create personalized videos for each person in the household, or even hold memorial services with the AI human present.
Prior to this Re;memory, DeepBrain AI brought an AI version of a news presenter on a national channel while also unveiling an AI version of Yoon Seok-Yeoul, who is currently the President of South Korea.
The company has been recognized as an honoree at the CES Innovation Awards 2023 in the Virtual & Augmented Reality category.
Be Right Back is one of the first 3 episodes I show someone when I’m introducing them to Black Mirror for the first time. The idea of communicating with your deceased loved one as if they’re still there, but knowing that they’re gone, seems like a way to ease into a new reality without them. If you’re ready for goosebumps, watch their video below.
Microsoft adding OpenAI products to Office suite
In a recent issue, we talked about Microsoft integrating OpenAI’s ChatGPT into Bing search. As should be expected, this wasn’t Microsoft’s only plans for OpenAI’s technology. The latest news sounds like we can expect OpenAI to take over the entire Microsoft Office suite of products.
The 🥩 of it:
Microsoft wants to incorporate artificial intelligence created by OpenAI into Word, Outlook, Powerpoint, and other apps in the Office suite.
The AI technology would allow users to generate text for documents and presentations based on a prompt.
Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019 to work on new technologies for its products.
A great investment, as OpenAI’s valuation went from $14 billion in 2019 to reportedly $29 billion just 2 years later.
Not to trigger our SEO friends (Hi. That’s me), but Microsoft also plans use OpenAI's ChatGPT technology to provide natural language search results in Bing.
The AI technology could be used to improve search results in Outlook, generate automatic replies to emails, and recommend writing style improvements.
However, the technology may need to be customized to individual clients securely to protect privacy, an issue that we’re just starting to scratch the surface on.
Microsoft has been working on privacy-preserving methods for GPT-3 and GPT-4, and has already seen some success.
The AI technology could pick up on individual or company-specific language and learn common phrases and paragraphs.
One of the greatest challenges with bigger marketing teams, is finding consistency in messaging. This integration will help ensure that the brand remains consistent in all messaging documents (website, social, email, etc.), serving as a quality check before anything goes live.
Microsoft has already incorporated GPT into Word's autocomplete feature, likely testing product adoption as they slowly release these new updates.
There is no definite timeline for when a greater push will be made, but the race is heating up as more contenders enter, so it’s likely a top priority at Microsoft in 2023.