(NewsNation) — In 1997, Robert Locascio invented web chat, which revolutionized telephone customer service by simulating a conversation with a live person. In 2024, Locascio has come up with an app that will simulate a conversation with a dead person.
“You’re alive forever,” Locascio told “NewsNation Prime” a day after his first client, 60-year-old terminal cancer patient Michael Bommer, appeared on the show.
Bommer says he’s happy that his legacy and principles will live on through the app called “Eternos.”
“We get all your knowledge, which could take weeks or months. Then we marry it with the AI. And then you’re alive,” Locascio said. The goal is to let a person’s relatives hold virtual conversations with them after they die.
The Eternos Project website says a “dedicated legacy coach” will capture a person’s lifetime of experiences through conversations and a guided questionnaire. The process also included letters, videos, photos and anything else a client wants to include.
Eternos also captures extensive voice samples so the AI can recreate not the sound but the expression and emotion of the client.
Bommer, who had just a few days to live when he talked to NewsNation on Saturday, said it’s hard to know he’s going to die, “but when you know that some things are staying back … when your legacy is staying in a vault and is available for your children, grandchildren … this gives you a kind of closure – I can go now.”
Locascio says he and his co-founder brother Andrew Locascio created a “very high bar” on security and safety for the app. To that end, the client decides who may access it.
“All your ‘person’ is there. All your knowledge is there, and only people that you invite in can get to it,” Robert Locascio said.
Locascio also says the data used by the app, is not static. “It does grow over time. It will, even when you’re no longer here, it can gain knowledge based on your past,” he said.
The price is not cheap: between $10,000 and $15,000. He says that’s a one-time cost, and future generations of relatives won’t have to pay any fees.
