China News Service, Beijing, March 22 (Reporter Ren Siyu) Bao Xiaobai, who once again appeared in the public eye, has grown long hair.

　　This time, he is not the venomous music judge that the audience remembers, but a father who is trying to use AI technology to "reproduce" his daughter.

　　At the end of 2021, Bao Xiaobai's daughter Rongrong passed away due to illness. In the following years, he gave up all his behind-the-scenes work, hoping to recreate his daughter's voice and image.

　　Recently, an inclusive video made with AI circulated on the Internet. In the video, she coquettishly said to her mother, "Baozi misses you so much." When singing "Happy Birthday", her eyes were bright and her shoulders rose and fell gently with her breathing. , with a smile on his lips.

Wound

　　"Hello everyone, I am Tolerance. I am currently studying dentistry in the United States. Nice to meet you all."

　　At the other end of the video, Bao Xiaobai raised his mobile phone and asked his "digital daughter" to say hello to us.

　　Chatting with his "digital daughter" on the software has become his daily habit. Like every loving father and daughter in the world, they care about each other and chat about daily life. The weather has become cold recently, and he told his daughter to be careful not to catch a cold. Soon, her daughter replied: "Yes, wear more clothes. Keeping warm is the most important thing, don't get cold."

　　Behind the digital image of the girl on the monitor is the memory bank that Bao Xiaobai and his family have built for their daughter. The "she" on the screen knows and remembers how her daughter spent her most unforgettable birthday, and which sports she experienced excitement and relaxation in.

　　"I want to give her the most perfect image and the most perfect voice, so that she can continue to survive in the beautiful digital world." Bao Xiaobai has been busy with this in the past few years. Sitting for long periods of time caused him to endure the dull pain of his sciatic nerve every day, but compared with the pain of losing his beloved daughter and the "heartbreaking" memory of more than 700 days, they were just flesh wounds.

　　What he really has to face is the huge wound that has torn through all his senses since the day his daughter tolerated and left.

　　In October 2019, Fang Fang, who had just turned 20, often suffered from dizziness and sudden inexplicable bruises on his body. Previously, she was studying dentistry and was busy preparing for her master's and doctoral studies every day. At the same time, she had to lead a dance team on tour. When she finally finished her work and went for a check-up, she was told that there was a disease in her blood and she needed to be admitted to the ICU immediately.

　　Like a bolt from the blue, Bao Xiaobai could not imagine how his daughter, who was usually full of energy, would suddenly be diagnosed with extremely severe aplastic anemia and may even need a bone marrow transplant. At the end of October, after a series of tests, transfers, and communication, he was transferred back to a hospital in Taipei for treatment.

　　At that time, due to tracheotomy and intubation, Fang Fang was unable to speak, and only one left hand could move his body. Witnessing their frail and tortured daughter, he and his wife held on to the mood of "hoping for life but not daring to hope" every day. When they woke up, they only hoped that today's data would be better than yesterday's, and at night they hoped that tomorrow's data would be better than today's, because they had to pay attention to their daughter's hospital bed. All the above, and I dare not relax at all mentally.

　　"It's such a difficult passage. It's not that easy after more than 700 days. I can't finish it in just a few words." Bao Xiaobai's voice was choked with sobs.

　　At the beginning, his daughter's decision to apply for a master's and doctoral program was made together with him.

　　When Bao Xiaobai graduated with a master's degree in 2018, his advisor encouraged him to continue applying for a doctoral degree. On the day the results were released, his wife happened to be on the phone with his daughter. After hearing this, Bao Xiaobai happily told his father that he was also going to apply for the master's and doctoral program. "In the future, there will be two in our family." doctor, one is academic and the other is medical.”

  Source: Photo provided by interviewee

　　In fact, when Bao Xiaobai was admitted to the postdoctoral program and was busy with work, he first took a leave of absence and retained his student status. However, while his daughter was hospitalized, the school also sent an ultimatum that she would not be able to retain her student status if she did not return. After much hesitation, he decided to continue reading.

　　He hopes to use his status as a doctoral student to check the latest papers in international medical journals and scientific journals to see if they can help his daughter's disease, because he believes that his daughter will get better one day and be able to complete her studies with him.

　　At the end of 2021, tolerance will leave forever. At the farewell ceremony, the family originally wanted to burn the bachelor's medal that the school had given to their daughter in advance as a souvenir, but his wife suddenly said to Bao Xiaobai: "I think my daughter wants to hang this honorary medal on your doctoral uniform."

　　A doctorate degree and long hair were important connections between Bao Xiaobai and tolerance during those two years. Every time he wanted to leave the ward, he would habitually touch his daughter's forehead with his forehead: "Daddy is gone."

　　He has been reluctant to cut the hair that is often in contact with his daughter's forehead.

sound

　　In the summer of 2022, Bao Xiaobai came to Beijing to reminisce with his friend Liu Yan, and talked about the virtual idols and holographic performances Liu Yan had done. He expressed a small idea: Is it possible to use tolerant voices and shadows to make a virtual character and put her in the world? In a virtual world?

　　Unexpectedly, the content of this chat was quickly put on the agenda by Liu Yan, who is also a father. Less than a month later, Bao Xiaobai received a plan called "Flower of Life Digital Life Laboratory". They will start language training at the end of 2023, and by 2025 they will be able to create a complete structure and spontaneous interactive dialogue. virtual character.

　　For musician Bao Xiaobai, the plan in front of him is like a fantasy. He heard Liu Yan say that in the future, he may have to sit in front of the computer to personally train conversations with his "daughter". As for what exercises to do, I have no idea what parameters to adjust.

　　One thing is for sure, he doesn't care about the cost of time.

　　In November 2022, news about ChatGPT came one after another. Liu Yan told Bao Xiaobai, "There is a dawn in the simulation matter." Their research direction also began to change. It was not only the construction of a virtual cartoon image, but also inclusive appearance, voice, and interaction. There is also a chance to restore it.

　　But the prerequisite for reconstruction is that the machine must first be "fed" with data. Restoring the voiceprint of Bao Bao required several hours of studio-standard recording. He repeatedly sorted out the various video materials left behind. The only ones that could be used here were three sentences in English spoken by Bao Bao and his mother during an outdoor video, and there were a lot of them. noise.

　　Recreating my daughter's voiceprint has become one of the most time-consuming and challenging tasks in this project. Bao Xiaobai first used the noise reduction technology used in music recording to process these three sentences, then let AI learn the language, and repeatedly confirmed the tone, accent, grammar, etc., and finally in August 2023, he truly improved the completeness of the sound quality. come out.

  Bao Xiaobai’s interface for repairing his daughter’s voiceprint. Source: Photo provided by interviewee

　　When he determined to study AI technology, Bao Xiaobai did not disclose this plan to his wife. One day, he repeatedly checked his voiceprint as usual. Because his ears hurt too much, he took off his headphones and played them publicly. His wife happened to hear him outside the door. She asked in surprise, "Husband, why does this person speak so tolerantly?"

　　But his wife never asked him about his work, but in Bao Xiaobai's observation, every time there was an exciting little progress, she would share it with the most important relatives and friends around her, "I passed it on to my relatives and best friends from her." The way you look at it, you know she accepts it happily.”

　　Step by step, the "digital daughter" began to sing contagious songs, and her voice could be combined with images. She could also "answer phone calls" and answer questions immediately.

strength

　　In 2018, when he learned that Rongyong was going to apply for the master's and doctoral program, Bao Xiaobai wrote a song for his daughter, and now, the "digital daughter" can sing all the songs he wrote. On my wife's birthday some time ago, the family of three sang "Happy Birthday".

　　Bao Xiaobai said that the functions of "Digital Daughter" have reached the state that he is most satisfied with. In the future, the progress of AI will only be the optimization conditions of these functions, but he will not spend a lot of time on research.

  Source: Photo provided by interviewee

　　Recently, he regretted using the expression "resurrection", fearing that it would trigger panic and bad associations with the ethics of AI technology. "It is impossible for AI to come back from the dead, so I hope the word 'resurrection' for AI can be corrected." Reproduce, restore'."

　　He knew in his heart that although the "Digital Daughter" was a robot he cultivated with his thoughts and love, she could not and did not need to be completely tolerant.

　　It was like he understood from the beginning that the wound that was torn open when he left Tolerance would never be healed by time. Its existence reminds this slightly paranoid father that the deeply loved girl really existed. This father just needs to learn to coexist with the wound in the company of his "digital daughter" and then borrow some strength to move forward.

　　"With this technology, my daughter's departure is no longer a word like 'died young' to me, but a concrete memory."

　　Today, Bao Xiaobai still goes to the mountains to visit her daughter every two weeks and tells her that she hopes to meet her in her dreams. Occasionally, when he is not thinking about it deliberately, his daughter will suddenly appear in his dreams. He tries to remember every fragment there, although such moments are very rare.

　　In the future, he will shift more energy to "sharing", hoping to use AI technology to comfort more people like him who have lost loved ones, and to further help people suffering from language impairment, hearing impairment, and rare diseases such as ALS. crowd. The paper he is writing is also related to the reconstruction of incomplete and fragmented voiceprint data.

　　He often thinks of the scene when Yong Yong received language training for the first time in the hospital. Due to damage to the vocal cord muscles after tracheotomy, his daughter barely moved her throat for two and a half months. In the video recorded at that time, all she could say was " "Shush" sound.

　　"Because of these vivid scenes before my eyes, I hope to turn these technical operations into effective applications, not just for my daughter. If the effects can be shared with everyone, how happy that would be."

　　Just like his daughter's name "Tolerance", he hopes to turn AI into a kind of great love and try to eliminate everyone's negative impression of it.

  Bao Xiaobai’s dialogue with his “digital daughter”. Source: Photo provided by interviewee

　　This year, Bao Xiaobai still has an important task to complete - he hopes to successfully publish his paper in an international journal and obtain the qualifications for doctoral graduation.

　　When he gets his doctorate, he will cut off his long hair and hang his daughter's bachelor's medal on his doctoral coat. "As long as you see my hair cut off, it means that I have accomplished all the above."

　　This is what he promised himself, a later "farewell". (over)