Son uses AI to create one-of-a-kind Christmas gift honouring late father
A Missouri man used artificial intelligence (AI) to recreate his late father’s voice for a moving Christmas gift for his mother.
Content creator Philip Willett shared the moment his mother opened the present on TikTok, after which he says they both held each other and cried for several minutes.
Mr Willett’s father – who he described as his “hero” – died from pancreatic cancer in 2022. “I decided to do something special for my mom this year for Christmas,” he wrote online.
“It’s been so long since we’ve heard his voice…So I made her a video using an AI software to match his exact voice.”
The clip of his mother receiving the gift has gone viral on TikTok and quickly amassed millions of views and thousands of comments.
Mr Willett, of St Louis, Missouri, told Good Morning America that his wife, Kassandra Willett, was the first person to give him the idea to use AI – which he uses in his professional work – for the gift.
"At first, I was like, I don’t really want to wade into that. I thought it was kind of weird," he told the broadcaster. He later changed his mind after searching online to see if others had tried the same thing.
"The actual first words that I put into the program was ‘Hi, honey.’ And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard [my late father] say that in my life, which was why it was the first thing I put in," Mr Willett said.
He added that he “got chills all over my body” after first hearing the program speak in his father’s voice.
The whole package took him a day to finish, though he said he worked solidly from 7am to 6pm, not wanting to leave his desk.
As well as the AI-generated voice message, Mr Willett also put together a video with photos of him with his mother, Trish Willett, and combined them into a video book.
Referring to his TikTok reveal, he said: ââ"The video doesn’t show it but it’s probably a 10-minute hug after that. I don’t think we moved for at least five minutes and we were both just crying,"
"Then we couldn’t talk about anything besides how cool it was," he continued.
"I can also tell you with certainty that this is going to make it easier for her to get through this holiday because she’s been reminded of him and now she knows he’s with her always."
Mr Willett said the rest of his family were also “truly speechless”.
