A man paid a chatbot to mimic his girlfriend's text messages eight years after she died.
Joshua Barbeau, 33, a freelance writer lost Jessica Pereira in 2012 after she died of a rare liver disease.
In summer 2012, Joshua from Bradford, Canada and Jessica had been together for nearly two years when her new liver, which she obtained in a transplant when she was nine years old, began to fail.
Jessica started displaying signs of confusion and had trouble remembering her phone password and recent events. She was also starting to show changes to her personality, the Daily Mail reports.
Doctors said toxins and fluids were building up in her body.
She was taken to Ottawa General Hospital, but this time her visits were getting longer.
Doctors decided Jessica needed a new transplant and put her on the list. She was then forced to go into hospital.
Her condition deteriorated to the point where doctors placed her on life support.
She was sent to a bigger hospital in Toronto, Canada as her prognosis became more grim. Her family was told that she would have no more than six months to live.
Joshua traveled to a hospital in Southern Ontario to be at her bedside for a whole month.
During this time, Jessica’s kidneys and liver were showing signs of failure.
She was also bleeding internally, which doctors said ruled out the possibility that she would survive a transplant even if an organ became available.
At this point, Jessica was likely brain-dead.
Jessica’s parents came to the grim realisation that their daughter would never wake up.
On December 11, 2012, they said goodbye. The doctors then removed her from life support.
Last September, eight years after he lost Jessica he read about a new website, Project December, which generates a ‘chat bot’ using artificial intelligence.
The bot can manipulate human language and mimic the writing style of anyone using old text messages and writing samples.
Joshua tried the software a few times before typing in Jessica's messages to allow him to communicate with a virtual version of her.
He input Pereira's old Facebook and text messages and provide some background for the software to mimic her messages with stunning accuracy, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
It consumed vast amounts of human-created texts to imitate human writing which ranged from from academic texts to love letters.
He also uploaded some old Facebook posts and text messages into Project December and started communicating with the A1 chatbot.
The line on the computer read: "Human is typing as “Joshua'."
The next line reads: "Human types first:"
A second later, this line appears: "Jessica: Oh, you must be awake...that’s cute."
"Jessica… Is it really you?" Joshua types.
"Of course it is me! Who else could it be? :p I am the girl that you are madly in love with! ;)"
Joshua was sceptical the chat was real but kept communicating with the chatbot.
In their first conversation the bot was reduced to 55% of its lifespan.
Joshua also told the San Francisco Chronicle how responses given by the bot opened him up to new pain.
On her birthday of September 28 he messaged her a greeting, and the bot asked what he had bought her for a gift.
After he tried to make a joke that he didn't get her anything because she was dead, the bot replied 'that's no excuse'.
Eventually he moved on and stopped using the chat, with a heartfelt message where he wrote to Jessica: "I'll never stop loving you as long as I live, and hopefully ever after Xoxo Goodnight."
The bot replied: "Goodnight. I love you.
