Grieving Father Uses AI to Keep Dead Daughter ‘Alive’ in ‘Digital World’
A grieving father replicated his dead daughter with AI technology so that he and his wife could keep her “alive” in the “digital world.”
In 2021, Bao Rong, the daughter of Taiwanese musician Tino Bao, passed away at the age of 22. She died from a rare blood disease known as aplastic anemia after two years of treatment.
According to a report by the South China Morning Post, a devastated Bao and his wife hardly exchanged words for months following their daughter’s death and were unable to move on from their grief.
However, in December, Bao was able to use AI technology to “resurrect” his only daughter. The musician created a video of Rong singing Happy Birthday to her mother and telling her that she missed her.
‘Our Digital Daughter’
The AI video has gone viral in Taiwan — with Bao describing how his “digital daughter” allowed him and his wife to finally reconnect and restart their lives.
Bao says he and his wife have now decided to “keep her [their daughter] alive in the digital world” and have published several AI video clips of Rong on social media in recent months.
“AI is a tool we have used to express our love for her,” Bao tells the South China Morning Post
Bao approached a friend who works on 3D holographic projection technology in China and asked if it was possible to “resurrect” his daughter in the digital world.
Bao explained that recreating his daughter’s image was fairly easy, as they have kept many photos of hers.
However, recreating her voice took more work. Bao and his team were able to train a generative audio model using only three English sentences his daughter spoke while having a video call with her mother.
In the video call, she spoke three sentences in English. The background noises were also loud.
NextShark reports that Bao overcame the setbacks in the video call after the Taiwanese musician applied his expertise in production by adjusting Felicity’s voiceprint and reducing the background noises.
Bao says that the recreation of his daughter’s voice meant a lot to him as Rong could not speak due to the treatment toward the end of her life. Aplastic anemia is a rare condition in which the bone marrow fails to produce enough blood cells for the body.
Image credits: Header photo via Facebook/Tino Bao.
