Can AI assist you to tell your story? That’s the thought behind a startup called Autobiographer, which leverages AI technology to have interaction users in meaningful conversations in regards to the events of their lives and the way they felt about them, after which turns those into prose, effectively creating your personal autobiography.
The startup is dabbling in an area that’s been fraught with debate — many individuals have rebelled against the concept that AI could replace art, writing and other creative endeavors. But in Autobiographer’s case, the AI guides the user to inform their very own story, in their very own words, then organizes that into output that might be exported as a PDF, and maybe, someday, sure and printed as well. In other words, it really works more as a collaborator moderately than the only real creator.
The app may not replace professionally handwritten stories, but it surely could function a method to document family history or a friendship, or create a keepsake on your children.
Autobiographer co-founder and CEO Matt Bowman sees the app as a method to leave behind a narrative for his godchildren. Before working at Facebook within the Bay Area, Bowman previously served within the Army Special Forces, where he was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. In consequence, he’s lived through losses which have shaped his worldview.
“I even have a bunch of great stories about my friends within the military — so many funny events, so many unique and amazing events — lots of which we heard on the funerals for a few of my best friends. Now it’s my job to work out how you can synthesize those and provides them to my godchildren,” Bowman says. He wants them to have the option to search out out more about their dad, his life within the military and what he was like as an individual.
“The technology has now come to a spot where it’s possible to do that,” Bowman explains. “We will actually tell these stories, speak them verbally after which turn them into beautiful keepsakes that we are able to provide to those around us.”
Bowman teamed up with James Barnes, who had also worked at Facebook through the 2016 and 2018 elections, where he was notably one in every of the primary people to note the problems with the information harvesting scandal Cambridge Analytica — an event that led to his involvement in several subsequent depositions and subpoenas. He later left Facebook to begin a Super PAC to fight Trump. As he was fooling around with OpenAI’s GPT-3, he found that artificial intelligence could help him process the things he had been through in his own life, including these milestones.
“Artificial intelligence had this incredible reflective capability to see myself, my story and my events,” Barnes says.
While Barnes and Bowman didn’t overlap at Facebook, they met up last yr in San Francisco, as Barnes was looking for someone with military expertise to assist the team (which also includes co-founders Luke Schoenfelder and Ivan Almaral) experiment with this concept of using AI for storytelling. The 2 bonded over their shared goals and other experiences, including their interest in psychedelic medicine.
“Exploring consciousness was a key point of connection for us,” explains Barnes. “As we work on these really tangible things, we’re also in a position to think in regards to the capability of our platform to permit people to introspect and to do more abstract, personal work,” he says.
To make use of the app, you engage in conversations with an AI agent, built on Anthropic technology, that prompts you to inform a story. For example, the initial prompt may ask you to inform a story about an adventure you had, reminding you there’s no right or flawed answer. You possibly can start speaking, pause and resume recording, or move on to a different query, if you happen to prefer.
The memories are stored in a vault, a biometrically protected, encrypted space that even Autobiographer staff can’t access.
“One of the vital necessary values as James, Luke, Ivan and I got here together, was the apparent understanding that nobody’s going to inform their cherished memories or their very emotionally sensitive stories to something that’s advertised — or that a bunch of engineers can see on the back end,” says Bowman.
The app permits you to revisit topics, explore your memories after which ultimately turn them into several types of prose — like a brief story or a gratitude letter for a loved one. For now, these are exported as PDFs, however the team would really like to supply a printed book in some unspecified time in the future.
Autobiographer costs $199 per yr — cheaper than a ghostwriter, definitely, but additionally expensive enough to discourage some.
The corporate has now also partnered with journalist Katie Couric, who will function a promotional partner for the startup. Her role continues to be being defined, nonetheless.
The corporate behind Autobiographer was founded three and half years ago, but has undergone several pivots. Essentially the most recent version of the app, launching today, was began a yr ago.
Autobiographer is backed by $4 million in pre-seed funding from various firms.
