AI – artificial intelligence – worries many people. But here’s a way, some care sector leaders believe, that AI technology can help residents, families and staff ….

By Alan Hayling co-founder and Chief Executive of YourAvatar.ai

You have almost certainly never heard of YourAvatar.ai.   That’s not surprising, because it’s a brand-new British company that I founded with a colleague only a year old, aiming to bring AI into the care sector in a highly innovative but socially responsible way.

As its name suggests, the company is all about creating AI powered avatars – digital twins of real people – that residents of care homes can talk with – as though on a video call – on their laptop, tablet or phone, anytime they like.

Here’s a short animation we have made about what we’re doing.

 

YourAvatar.ai has developed technology, specifically for the care sector, which enables the relatives or close friends of someone needing care to create a digital twin of themselves in less than five minutes on their laptop at zero cost.  It just needs the person to use their laptop camera to take five photos of their face with different expressions, to give consent for their voice to be cloned, and to read a short sample of text – and then their digital twin appears on screen.

The avatar looks and sounds just like the person who has created it.  So, for example, a resident of a care home can have a host of avatars on a phone, computer or tablet – their partner, best friend, adult children or grandchildren – with whom they can converse when they choose.

The intention is, for example, that people with the early stages of dementia who are living in a care home will be better able to recall close family members who cannot visit daily or even weekly (because they might live too far away and have their own family and work demands).  And a digital twin can provide companionship for people who are isolated and lonely, helping to mitigate the growing crisis of loneliness and social isolation in society.

Care home managers to whom it has been demonstrated have spotted a host of other possibilities.   For example, a care assistant on whom a resident has come to depend emotionally can build a digital twin of themselves so that they are available to the resident when they are busy elsewhere, off-duty, or unavailable through annual leave or sick leave.  That digital twin can encourage them to eat and drink.

And by linking the avatar to monitoring technology, the digital twin of, say a daughter or partner, can interrupt a resident moving to get out of bed and encourage that resident to stay in bed while the system makes contact with a carer to get help for the resident.

If this all sounds a bit ‘Black Mirror’, you’re right; it does raise important ethical issues – and I and my colleagues have given this considerable thought.  For example, it will always be made clear on screen that the digital twin is not a real person – that it is an AI driven replica.  It will use the same security protocols as the banking apps we all now depend on.  We will never monetise, share, or even have access to the data that families give the AI model.  It will have built in guardrails forbidding conversations to stray into unacceptable areas or give inappropriate advice.  And it will never replace real human relationships – it will be available only to supplement those relationships.

So how can an interactive avatar like this help?

First, we intend to make it very easy for the elderly and for their family members and friends to use.  So like Amazon’s Alexa device, the plan is to make it voice activated.  And the idea is that as well as having general conversations with an avatar representing their family, friends or carers, it will have specific functions – for example, a ten minute session focussing on light physical exercise;  a session in which the digital twin (maybe a grandchild) asks lots of questions about their life story – building up to being able to produce an illustrated book of their life; sessions in which a digital twin, maybe their husband or wife, reads a book to them; a session discussing and listening to favourite music.  We are working with an academic group (including neuroscientists and specialists in AI) who are developing AI conversational tools to stimulate both short-term and long-term memory in dementia patients to design these sessions.

So we think it has real potential.

If you’re interested in finding out more, the company can be contacted by email at Alan@lifelegacy.ai.  Or via the website: www.youravatar.ai