Grandmother talks to mourners at her own funeral

When Marina Smith MBE died aged 87 in June, her grieving loved ones thought all they had left was their memories.

In fact, the leading Holocaust campaigner returned to them from beyond the grave in the form of an artificial intelligence-powered hologram, able to answer their questions and reveal family secrets.

Mrs Smith was one of the first adopters of new technology, available in the UK from this week, that enabled her to appear at her own funeral in Babworth, Notts.

The “holographic conversational video experience” came courtesy of StoryFile, an AI-powered video platform.

The brainchild of her Los Angeles-based son, Stephen Smith, it allowed her to deliver a brief speech about her life and spirituality and respond to questions from those who attended the ceremony, creating the illusion of a real-time conversation.

StoryFile combines the latest studio technology - a bank of 20 synced cameras to capture the subject in hologram-specific detail - advanced artificial intelligence and expert psychological evaluation to create a digital clone that allows people to talk to the dead.

“Mum answered questions from grieving relatives after they had watched her cremation,” Mr Smith 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 of their lost loved one.”

Mrs Smith, a former teacher who was married to a Methodist minister, created her own non-profit organisation to help individuals in need and later bought a derelict farm in Laxton, Nottinghamshire, which she and her husband turned into a Christian conference and retreat centre.

But a transformative family holiday to Israel in 1981, prompted them to follow a new direction.

The family home became the National Holocaust Centre, where Mrs Smith created a highly successful Holocaust education programme.

It remains the only national museum in the UK dedicated to teaching and learning the lessons from the Holocaust and Mrs Smith was recognised in the Queen’s 2005 New Year’s Honours List with an MBE for services to Holocaust remembrance and education,

In January, Mrs Smith spent several hours a day for two days, documenting and discussing her life on a personal computer using a plug-in webcam.

Mr Smith said: “What was most valuable to me as her son, was the fact that my mother was prepared to answer questions about her early childhood.

“This included difficult topics such as the divorce of her parents and living as an immigrant from India. She was also prepared to answer interesting questions about her points of view on politics, the environment and the future, which was interesting because I had never had those conversations with her before.”

‘Her digital version shocked mourners’

He added: “People feel emboldened when recording their data. Mourners might get a freer, truer version of their lost loved one.

“Relatives were staggered by my mum’s new honesty at her funeral. She had previously been too embarrassed to reveal her true childhood.

“A question about it at the funeral suddenly had her revealing her childhood in India that we knew nothing about.

“During her life, my mum worked very closely with the Jewish community, I could never understand why, we always knew her to be a Methodist.

“Her digital version shocked mourners - she told us she was actually a Seventh-Day Adventist. Suddenly her life made sense to me in a clear, new way.”

The question-answering, ever-living, digital version of a lost loved one can be purchased for as little as £39.99, which includes the choice of 75 questions, unlimited conversations and two-minute video answers.

Mr Smith explained that assessing an individual comes from a bank of 250,000 potential questions.

They choose their preferred topic areas, such as careers, relationships and childhood secrets, based on the areas they feel their loved ones might want answers to in the future.

Mr Smith, who previously ran Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation, has won plaudits for the Storyfile technology and was awarded an MBE in 2000

Its potential usages are widespread.

Clarence Jones, Martin Luther King’s former lawyer and confidante, has stored huge amounts of recorded data that after his passing, may change the understanding of the American civil rights movement and the campaigner’s personal journey.

Meanwhile, William Shatner, 90, the Star Trek star, has recorded information about the television series that will only be revealed after his death.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's public plea for support from tech companies in June touched a nerve with Mr Smith.

He has since recorded and captured Storyfile versions of 77 individuals in war-torn areas of Ukraine.