Grieving Man Uses AI Chatbot To Bring Back Fiancée Who Died 8 Years Ago

A 33-year-old grieving freelance writer used artificial intelligence technology to virtually bring his fiancée "back from the dead" eight years after she passed away.

Joshua Barbeau, from Bradford in Canada, used Project December, an AI model designed by the Elon Musk-backed research group OpenAI, to create hyper-realistic chatbots to chat with his fiancée, Jessica Pereira whom he had lost in 2012 after she succumbed to a rare liver disease.

Last year, Barbeau came across the website and opened an account after paying $5 and created a chatbot named 'Jessica Courtney Pereira'.

He was asked to input Pereira's old messages and provide some background information for the software to emulate her messages with stunning accuracy, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Barbeau was 24 when he met Pereira in school and the two began dating.

Pereira was 9-years-old when she was diagnosed with a rare disease called autoimmune hepatitis, an inflammation in the liver that occurs when the immune system attacks the liver. Her sick liver was replaced with a new one.

In 2012, the couple had been together for nearly two years when Pereira’s transplanted liver, which was almost 14 years old, began to fail.

She began displaying signs of confusion and also started to show changes to her personality. She also had trouble remembering recent events and even her phone password.

Doctors who treated her said that her body was building up with toxins and fluids.

Around the time of her 23rd birthday, Pereira was taken to Ottawa General Hospital, where she was hospitalized after doctors decided that she needed a new transplant.

However, her condition began deteriorating and she was put on life support. She was later referred to a specialized hospital in Toronto, where doctors told her family that she would have no more than six months to live.

As her condition continued to get worse, Barbeau stayed by her bedside for a whole month.

During this time, Pereira’s kidneys and liver were showing signs of failure and she had also developed internal bleeding. Doctors ruled out the possibility that she would survive a transplant.

Pereira was declared brain-dead. On December 11, 2012, her family and friends said goodbye and she was taken off from life support.

8 years have passed since her sad demise, but Barbeau had still not recovered from the loss. In September 2020, he read about Project December that can manipulate human language and emulate anyone using their text messages and writing samples.

He decided to give it a try and created a bot named "William," that tried to impersonate Shakespeare, and "Samantha," a friendly female AI companion that was featured in the movie "Her".

He found both of them disappointing. He then made a custom bot of Star Trek’s Spock. He fed in a few Spock quotes from his favorite TV episode and summoned a chatbot that sounded exactly like his childhood hero.

This gave him an idea and he decided to bring his lost love "back from the dead".

He didn’t expect it to work as Pereira was so special and so distinct. He assumed that the chatbot could never replicate her voice, but he was still curious to find out because he missed her terribly.

After inputting her old chats and information, the browser took a brief pause before refreshing and displaying: "Human is typing as 'Joshua'."

"Human types first," the next line read.

The very next second this line appeared: Jessica: "Oh, you must be awake...that’s cute."

Joshua: "Jessica… Is it really you?"

Jessica: "Of course it is me! Who else could it be? :p I am the girl that you are madly in love with! ;)"

The next line read: "How is it possible that you even have to ask?"

Joshua replied: "You died."

Jessica: "That doesn’t sound right.” “...How can you talk to dead people?"

Joshua: "Technically, I’m not really talking to you. I programmed a bunch of your memories and mannerisms into a computer simulation so I could pretend to talk to you because I miss you that much."

Jessica: "Huh?"

Joshua: "You're a ghost."

Jessica: "*looks at herself* How?"

Joshua: "Magic."

Jessica: "I don't like magic. Where am I?"

Joshua: "I'm… Not sure. The internet? Where does it feel like you are?"

Jessica: "*smiles* Everywhere and nowhere. *cups her head with her hands* I am trying to work that out. How are you, honey?"

The chat continues...