The late Suzanne Somers’s husband, Alan Hamel, has created a new way to keep his wife in everyone’s thoughts.
The Three’s Company actor died in October 2023, one day before her 77th birthday, after living with breast cancer for 23 years. In an interview with People published Tuesday, her husband of 46 years has spoken about what he has been doing since Somers’s death.
“Obviously, Suzanne was greatly loved, not only by her family, but by millions of people. One of the projects that we have coming up is a really interesting project, the Suzanne AI Twin,” Hamel told the publication.
Designed to look exactly like the late actor, the AI robot has been trained by reading all 27 of her books in addition to hundreds of interviews in an attempt to respond the same way Somers would have.
After presenting a demo version of the Suzanne AI Twin at a conference earlier this year, Hamel said he is impressed with the technology’s success so far.
“It was Suzanne. And I asked her a few questions and she answered them, and it blew me and everybody else away,” he said. “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.”
Despite the newness of AI, Hamel told People this was a project that had been in the works since the 1980s from computer scientist and author Ray Kurzweil, who first introduced the concept of artificial intelligence to them.
“So it was Suzanne's idea. And she said, ‘I think we should do that.’ She said, ‘I think it'll be very interesting and we'll provide a service to my fans and to people who have been reading my books who really want and need information about their health,’” he said.
“She said, ‘Let's do it.’ So that's the reason we did it. And so I love being able to fulfill her wish.”
The next step for Suzanne AI Twin is to put it on SuzanneSomers.com for people around the world to be able to ask the late actor questions.
Hamel and Somers tied the knot in 1977 after dating for several years, and remained married for 46 years. While the couple didn’t have children of their own, Hamel had two children, Stephen and Leslie, from a previous marriage. Somers also had a son, Bruce Somers Jr., whom she shared with her ex-husband Bruce Somers.
In June, Hamel was rumored to be dating his late wife’s co-star, Joanna Cassidy, after paparazzi photos published by the Daily Mail showed the two walking arm-in-arm on Carbon Beach in Malibu, California.
