Would You Hang Out With Suzanne Somers’s AI Clone?
The future has arrived, and it looks a lot like a Black Mirror episode. At its helm, apparently, is Alan Hamel, a former host of several Canadian daytime shows and the widowed husband of the actress Suzanne Somers. In an interview with People on Tuesday, Hamel announced that, just two years after Somers’s death, he has created an AI clone of his late wife.
The couple were together for 55 years up until Somers’s passing in 2023, but Hamel claims that he and Somers had been discussing the possibility of AI since the ’80s with their friend Ray Kurzweil, the famous computer scientist who accurately predicted the current reality of machine learning. “Obviously, Suzanne was greatly loved, not only by her family, but by millions of people,” Hamel said. “One of the projects that we have coming up is a really interesting project, the Suzanne AI Twin.” He described this initiative, which he swears Somers came up with, as “perfect.”
Hamel apparently shared a demo of Suzanne AI at a conference earlier this year and reported confidently that “it was Suzanne.” The former television host said that AI Somers had been trained with hundreds of interviews the real Somers had given over the years, along with all 27 of her books. “I asked her a few questions and she answered them, and it blew me and everybody else away,” he said of the demo. “When you look at the finished one next to the real Suzanne, you can’t tell the difference. It’s amazing.”
While Hamel remains concerned that Somers’s family might not approve of their matriarch’s AI reincarnation, he is apparently pretty confident that this is what Somers wanted. “I feel really good about being able to deliver what Suzanne wanted and doing so that it’ll be something that basically will, should, go on for generations. I think our family loves the idea, really loves the idea,” he said. “We’ve talked about it a lot, and they said, ‘We’re going to get to the point where it’s not going to seem weird, and it’ll just be another way to communicate with people we cared about.’” He added that his family is “all young and very successful, and they thought this would be a great tribute to Suzanne herself.” I guess in Hamel’s world, “young and very successful” translates to “ecstatic about their AI grandmother.”
As Hamel continues to tinker with his new wifebot, he has some ideas for her career trajectory. Apparently, he’s pitched her as a potential Kennedy Center honoree. “I was appointed to the committee at the Kennedy Center to choose the honorees for this year, and I suggested Suzanne Somers,” he shared, adding that his idea was shot down because they “only do this for people who were alive.”
Nonetheless, Hamel seems particularly jazzed about the possibility of delivering Somers back to her fans (who “miss her terribly”) in a new digitized format. “Once I’m satisfied that we have everything, then we’ll put her on SuzanneSomers.com, and we’ll invite all her fans and all our customers to come and talk to her,” he said. “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.” Maybe! Or maybe it’ll force an ethical conundrum about digital consent because the internet is full of sickos.
While AI Somers spends her days and nights fielding questions from fans, Hamel will be free to hang out with her Hollywood Wives co-star Joanna Cassidy, whom he started dating earlier this year. Sounds like he’s got it all figured out.
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