Suzanne Somers’ husband has used AI to partially clone his late wife.
Alan Hamel told People magazine that the artificial recreation of his wife was “perfect” when he debuted her at a conference earlier this year, and two years after her death.
Instead of a clone, he called it “Suzanne AI Twin,” Variety reported.
“It was Suzanne. And I asked her a few questions and she answered them, and it blew me and everybody else away,” he told the publication. “When you look at the finished one next to the real Suzanne, you can’t tell the difference. It’s amazing. And I mean, I’ve been with Suzanne for 55 years, so I know what her face looks like, and when I just look at the two of them side by side, I really can’t tell which one is the real and which one is the AI.”
Somers died in 2023 at the age of 76 after being diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer 23 years earlier, CNN reported.
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Hamel explained that he and Somers had discussed the plan for decades, claiming that computer scientist and author Ray Kurzweil and the couple spoke about the potential of artificial intelligence as far back as the 1980s.
“We knew it was coming. It took decades to happen, but he knew it was going to happen, and he shared that information with us,” Hamel said, admitting that it was his wife’s idea, with her telling him to do it to “provide a service to my fans and to people who have been reading my books who really want and need information about their health.”
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He said that the AI stand-in was trained with “all of Suzanne’s 27 books and a lot of interviews that she has done, hundreds of interviews, so that she’s really ready to be able to be asked any question at all and be able to answer it, because the answer will be within her,” adding that it was done to get the look and speech identical to his late wife.
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Despite the demonstration, the AI Suzanne is not quite ready for prime time, but once she — or it — is, Hamel said he will “put her on SuzanneSomers.com” so fans can “come and just hang out with her.”