A grandma answered questions at her own funeral when she appeared as a hologram to speak to mourners - and even spilt previously unheard family secrets. Marina Smith passed away in June at the age of 87, and shortly after her cremation, those in attendance were invited to ask her questions as she was recreated in avatar form.
Before her death, Marina had recorded interviews with her son, Stephen Smith, for his company StoryFile, who then edited the footage into excerpts which could be used to answer questions at her funeral. Then, voice-recognition software was used to find the best sound clips from the interview to respond to whichever question was asked.
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Marina's son Stephen - who is the chief executive of StoryFile - said funeral attendees were shocked by the answers his mother, who had been a Holocaust awareness campaigner before her passing, gave to people's questions, as they were often far more honest than they had expected.
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, he said: "The extraordinary thing was that she answered their questions with new details and honesty. People feel emboldened when recording their data. Mourners might get a freer, truer version."
Stephen also revealed his mum - who also worked as a teacher and was appointed an MBE in 2005 for services to Holocaust education - had been happy to talk to him in the interviews about subjects he had never asked her about before.
He said his mum talked freely about the divorce of her own parents and her life as an immigrant from India, which were subjects she had previously been guarded about.
He added: "Relatives were staggered by my mum's new honesty. She had been too embarrassed to reveal her childhood. A question at the funeral suddenly had her revealing her childhood in India that we knew nothing about."
Marina was one of the first people to use the new technology and put it into practice at her funeral, and had recorded the series of interviews over two days in January in front of 20 cameras so that a full 3D rendering of the grandma could be reconstructed using the footage.
During her funeral in Babworth, Nottinghamshire, mourners listened to a speech about her life and spirituality before asking questions and discovered Marina had set up a non-profit organisation to help people in need, and had run a Christian retreat at a farm in Laxton.
Stephen Smith's company, StoryFile, creates digital versions of people for £40, and currently boasts William Shatner as one of its clients, who has been recorded answering questions about his career, including his iconic role as Captain James T Kirk in the Star Trek franchise.
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