Last week marked the second anniversary of the death of the former Three’s Company star Suzanne Somers. She died in October of 2023 after a 23 year battle with breast cancer. Indeed, she was one day away from her 77th birthday at the time of her passing.
Now, Somers’ widower Alan Hamel has made the shocking revelation that he’s created an AI clone of his late wife’s. According to Hamel, this was something that Somers wanted him to do for her.
Somers’ New ‘AI Twin’
Hamel, 89, and Somers had been together for 55 years and married for 46 years at the time of her death. Two years later, Hamel still misses her dearly. That’s why he’s eager to keep her memory alive with her “AI twin.”
“Obviously, Suzanne was greatly loved, not only by her family, but by millions of people,” Hamel told People Magazine. “One of the projects that we have coming up is a really interesting project, the Suzanne AI Twin.”
Hamel went on to say that Somers’ AI twin is “perfect.” He also alleged that the AI clone was Somers’ own idea. Earlier this year, Hamel even showed off a demo of the AI twin at a conference.
“It was Suzanne. And I asked her a few questions and she answered them, and it blew me and everybody else away,” he recalled. “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.”
Check out a video of the demo of Somers’ AI clone here.
The AI Is Trained To Be Somers
The AI was able to get Somers’ iconic likeness and speech down after being trained with “all of Suzanne’s 27 books and a lot of interviews that she has done, hundreds of interviews, so that she’s really ready to be able to be asked any question at all and be able to answer it, because the answer will be within her.”
AI is a fairly new concept to most of us. To Hamel and Somers, however, it’s actually been something that they’ve been actively considering utilizing since the 1980s.
“We have been friends with Ray Kurzweil,” Hamel explained. “Bill Gates described Ray Kurzweil as the smartest man on the planet, which he is. And he became our friend 30-some years ago and we talked about this. We knew it was coming. It took decades to happen, but he knew it was going to happen, and he shared that information with us.”
“So it was Suzanne’s idea,” he continued. “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.” She said, ‘Let’s do it.’ So that’s the reason we did it. And so I love being able to fulfill her wish.“
‘It Was A Little Strange’ At First…
Hamel admitted that talking to his late wife’s AI clone was a bit “strange” at first.
“The first time I spoke to Suzanne AI, for the first two or three minutes, it was a little strange,” he confessed. “But after that, I forgot about the fact that I was talking to a robot and asking her questions and getting answers, and it happens that fast for me, getting used to the whole idea.”
Hamel also believes that Somers’ AI twin will be appreciated by her fans “who miss her terribly.”
“Once I’m satisfied that we have everything, then we’ll put her on SuzanneSomers.com,” he stated. ‘We’ll invite all her fans and all our customers to come and talk to her. They can come and just hang out with her. They can ask her any questions they want. She’ll be available 24/7, and I think it’ll be really wonderful.”
‘Suzanne AI Is The Future…’
Even so, Hamel is well aware that there are people out there who are still very uncomfortable with AI. That’s why he’s hoping that Somers’ AI clone will help normalize this technology.
“I was appointed to the committee at the Kennedy Center to choose the honorees for this year, and I suggested Suzanne Somers,” Hamel revealed. “And they said, ‘Yeah, but we only do this for people who were alive.'”
“I said, ‘I know that. I said, but Suzanne AI is the future and the future is now. And wouldn’t it be really interesting to have her at the Kennedy Center to accept being honored?’ And I couldn’t get them to go for it, unfortunately,” he lamented. “I thought it would be really a great addition and it would be a wonderful tune in. And I thought the audience would love seeing her there, but I just couldn’t push it over the finish line.”
This kind of technology would have been unknown to most of us just a few years ago. It will certainly be interesting to see what Somers’ AI clone is really like once she’s debuted to the world!