Apparently Suzanne Somers is back, because her husband says he created her ‘AI twin’

Suzanne Somers arrives at the 2014 Carousel Of Hope Ball, in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Oct. 11, 2014. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

Suzanne Somers may have died two years ago, but her husband of 55 years says he has a unique plan to keep her memory alive.

Alan Hamel told People magazine that he’s been working on an artificial intelligence clone of his late wife. Somers died in 2023 at the age of 76 after having survived an aggressive form of breast cancer for 23 years.

“Obviously, Suzanne was greatly loved, not only by her family, but by millions of people,” Hamel told the publication. “One of the projects that we have coming up is a really interesting project, the Suzanne AI Twin.”

He said he and Somers had conversations about it back in the 1980s, once they learned about the concept from computer scientist and writer Ray Kurzweil.

“We have been friends with Ray Kurzweil. Bill Gates described Ray Kurzweil as the smartest man on the planet, which he is,” Hamel said. “And he became our friend 30-some years ago and we talked about this. We knew it was coming. It took decades to happen, but he knew it was going to happen, and he shared that information with us.”

Hamel added: “So it was Suzanne’s idea.”

“And she said, ‘I think we should do that.’ She said, ‘I think it’ll be very interesting and we’ll provide a service to my fans and to people who have been reading my books who really want and need information about their health,’” he said. “She said, ‘Let’s do it.’ So that’s the reason we did it. And so I love being able to fulfill her wish.”

The AI clone, which he reportedly he shared a demonstration of earlier this year at a conference, was trained using “all of Suzanne’s 27 books and a lot of interviews that she has done, hundreds of interviews, so that she’s really ready to be able to be asked any question at all and be able to answer it, because the answer will be within her.”

“It was Suzanne,” Hamel said. “And I asked her a few questions and she answered them, and it blew me and everybody else away. When you look at the finished one next to the real Suzanne, you can’t tell the difference.”

One of his main concerns was that their family wouldn’t like the idea, but Hamel now says they are fully on board.

“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 said. “I’m glad to hear that from my family because I wasn’t sure how they would take it, but they’re all young and very successful, and they thought this would be a great tribute to Suzanne herself.”

By Lisa Respers France, CNN