OuterType is an app that simulates a conversation with your dear lost ones. If you miss your late partner, friend or father, text them and you will get a reply. The mission of OuterType is not to talk to spirits, but rather to replace the lost daily routine of sharing feelings and opinions through instant message services.
The user will be initially asked several questions regarding the experiences they shared with the departed, such as their nicknames, their common interests, or the usual subjects of their conversations. OuterType will then use this data to generate an avatar of the dear lost one which represents as accurately as possible the users perception of them and the memory they wish to preserve.
The user and the avatar, then, will be able to have a real chat: the messages will touch common daily issues, the departeds interests and the experiences the user and the departed shared.
OuterType is “a sort of Siri from the World Beyond” or a “Whatsapp with someone who has passed away”: It’s a way to keep contact with those people who we miss and who cannot reply to our text messages anymore.
OuterType is built using the recent advances in Artificial Intelligence, especially in Natural Language Processing, Reasoning, and Natural Language Generation. It relies on a rule-based approach combined with Machine Learning in order to be able to deliver the service even when the data collection is not vast. The solution is built in a way that it can learn and improve itself over time as more data is available. Our system is trained using already existing messages written by humans, in order to mimic as natural conversation as possible.