--- title: "Metaverse CEO Says ChatGPT Is Speeding Up Timeline for Emulating Dead People" description: "OpenAI's ChatGPT might be speeding up the process of getting a realistic, AI-powered digital avatar of your dead loved one to market." date: "2023-02-04" modified: "2023-02-04" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/chatgpt-emulating-dead-people" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Future Society" - "Meta" - "Metaverse" - "Virtual Reality" tags: - "ai" - "artificial intelligence" - "chatgpt" - "grief tech" --- # Metaverse CEO Says ChatGPT Is Speeding Up Timeline for Emulating Dead People ![OpenAI's ChatGPT might be speeding up the process of getting a realistic, AI-powered digital avatar of your dead loved one to market.]() *\Image: Getty Images/Futurism\* If you've yet to develop healthy coping mechanisms for the heartbreaking — and deeply human — experiences of loss and grief, maybe don't bother. According to one metaverse CEO, the introduction of OpenAI's ChatGPT may well speed up the process of getting a realistic, AI-powered digital avatar of your dead loved ones to market, *way* ahead of schedule. "The AI is progressing extremely fast," Somnium Space CEO Artur Sychov, whose company is currently working to develop a "Live Forever" mode for robot avatars in its "[virtual reality world]()," [told *Motherboard*](). "Honestly, it is progressing faster than even we anticipated." Somnium Space's maybe-forthcoming "Live Forever" feature is simple, at least in theory. Hand Sychov's firm a bunch of personal data, and they'll create a digitized "you," which will "live" "forever" in the company's hallowed metaverse halls. You could die knowing that your kids and grandkids and otherwise loved ones would be able to communicate with this interactive version of you, and those loved ones, in turn, would never be forced to entirely accept your death. It's not the [Jeff Bezos school]() of physical immortality, but it's certainly [immortality ]()*[lite]().* "Literally, if I die — and I have this data collected — people can come or my kids, they can come in, and they can have a conversation with my avatar, with my movements, with my voice," Sychov told *Motherboard* in a [previous interview last April](). "You will meet the person. And you would maybe for the first 10 minutes while talking to that person, you would not know that it's actually AI. That's the goal." At the time, Sychov told *Motherboard* that "Live Forever" was at least five years away. Now, per *Motherboard*, Sychov has chopped his imagined timeline down to two years or even less, and it's all thanks to the work of OpenAI. The company's buzzy chatbot has apparently pushed the immortality project into hyperdrive, even providing a step-by-step plan detailing how to integrate itself into the broader landscape of Sychov's digital world after being installed into one of the game's robot avatars. But its development skills aside, Sychov and a developer that he works with — that developer, known only as "Artific," was actually the one who installed ChatGPT into that first avatar to begin with — argue that their timeline jump is mostly due to the fact that the metaverse provides ideal conditions for a Large Language Model (LLM) product like ChatGPT to succeed. The tech is already a pretty good conversationalist, depending on the prompt. And unlike the messier real world, a digital environment is more controlled. Thus, the bot only has so much data to work with and synthesize at once, which could actually be a good thing — especially if the goal is to embody a specific person. "It's a perfect condition for AI," said Sychov, "because it can learn from every digital object instantly." And while the developers are reportedly struggling with how to "adequately store the data recordings" required for "Live Forever" avatars and other in-game robots to function as they wish, they claim they've already been some strides with the bots' capacity to "remember," at least in their short-term, as well as in their ability to sound a bit more human. You know, because digital avatars of lost loved ones speaking by way of bots — bots that in turn are trained on limited, context-less data — is exactly how to preserve their humanity. **READ MORE:** *[Founder: You'll Soon Be Able to Talk to Your Dead Mom In the Metaverse Thanks to ChatGPT]()* \[*Motherboard*\] **More on reviving dead parents:** [*Ghoulish AI Simulates Your Dead Parents*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()