Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Coast to Coast George Norie with your
Speaker 2: producer Paul Jeffrey David's has been with us. Has been
Speaker 2: a pioneer and cutting edge popular culture technology for decades.
Speaker 2: He's been a UFO witness who was presented at major
Speaker 2: UFO conferences worldwide. He's got several books out, including Growing
Speaker 2: Up Sci Fi and Garrett Park and he's working on
Speaker 2: a film. Paul, welcome back.
Speaker 3: Have you been George? Life is great and it's good
Speaker 3: to hear from you.
Speaker 4: Thanks for inviting, and your health is good. Everything's good.
Speaker 3: Couldn't be better.
Speaker 4: Excellent.
Speaker 2: Tell me about this film I'm hearing so much buzz about.
Speaker 3: Well, it's actually a series, not just one film, and
Speaker 3: it's on Amazon Prime Video. It's called The Naughty Adventures
Speaker 3: of Scarlett May Blossom and it's based on a book.
Speaker 3: It's nine episodes. It's a comedy. You know, I think
Speaker 3: it's never the wrong time to have laughter in our world.
Speaker 3: Everything is so depressing so much of the time. This
Speaker 3: thing is designed to make people hooton holler, and the
Speaker 3: thing that's unique about it is that it's the first
Speaker 3: time in history that a producer has made a series
Speaker 3: where all of the characters were created using artificial intelligence.
Speaker 3: The voices are real comedy actors, but every character you
Speaker 3: see was created with AI. Never been done before, and
Speaker 3: it's causing a bit of a stir.
Speaker 2: I had a friend who worked with you, Mark Rowlings.
Speaker 2: He had a house that I believe Charlie Chaplin used
Speaker 2: to own, and you folks did a seance there, didn't you.
Speaker 3: We sure did. That was in twenty sixteen, if I
Speaker 3: remember correctly. Not only Charlie Chaplin, but that was a
Speaker 3: home where Forrest j Ackerman lived, who was a pioneer
Speaker 3: of science fiction. He was the editor of almost two
Speaker 3: hundred issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, and he
Speaker 3: was my mentor. He was somebody who was very very
Speaker 3: close to from the time that I was a young teenager,
Speaker 3: and he sort of discovered me as an amateur teenage
Speaker 3: filmmaker of monster movies. So we were lifelong friends. And
Speaker 3: he died at age ninety two, and Mark Rawlings, who's
Speaker 3: your associate, had bought the house and he had reported
Speaker 3: a lot of really strange activity in the house, and
Speaker 3: we wanted to know whether Forrest Jackerman was still around,
Speaker 3: so we arranged four days of research there and held
Speaker 3: a seance with a medium who I believe you know
Speaker 3: pretty well, Suzanne Wilson.
Speaker 4: Yes, she's one of the best.
Speaker 3: She's extraordinary. And you know, I didn't grow up leaving
Speaker 3: in the other side, life after death or really anything
Speaker 3: much paranormal. But after Farie Ackerman died, I came to
Speaker 3: a point where I didn't have any choice anymore, because
Speaker 3: he had promised me that if there was the other side,
Speaker 3: if it really existed, that he would try to drop
Speaker 3: me a line. He didn't personally believe in it while
Speaker 3: he was alive, he said he was an atheist, but
Speaker 3: he said he'd dropped me a line with a little wink.
Speaker 3: And after he passed, not only did I have really
Speaker 3: strange phenomena happening to me that looked like he was
Speaker 3: dropping me aligne, but many others also felt that they
Speaker 3: were hearing from him. And it went on for years.
Speaker 3: George and so I became a believer. At one point
Speaker 3: I optioned the rights to Fate magazine. It's been around
Speaker 3: since the Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting. I think in nineteen
Speaker 3: forty seven, and it has a section in there called
Speaker 3: My Proof of Survival and they've published, you know, hundreds
Speaker 3: of stories of people who are convinced that they've heard
Speaker 3: from a friend or a loved one after the person
Speaker 3: has passed. There is so much evidence for this. I
Speaker 3: even co wrote a book about it called an Atheist
Speaker 3: in Heaven.
Speaker 4: That was what Schwartz, Gary Schwartz.
Speaker 3: Doctor Gary Schwartz. The Atheist in Heaven was far As J. Hackerman,
Speaker 3: and we subtitled the book was the Ultimate Evidence for
Speaker 3: Life after Death. And I think one of the really
Speaker 3: interesting things that came out of that book was that
Speaker 3: we delineated four types of evidence for communication with the
Speaker 3: other side. Now, one of the types was evidence from mediums.
Speaker 3: Gary Schwartz had studied mediums at the University of Arizona,
Speaker 3: Tucson for well over a decade. Susanne Wilson one of
Speaker 3: those that he had studied, and many mediums, some who
Speaker 3: didn't really have the ability. He could separate those out
Speaker 3: from those who did have an extraordinary ability. So one
Speaker 3: way is evidence for mediums. Another way we call synchronicities,
Speaker 3: which is where you have an absolutely extraordinary it seems
Speaker 3: like a coincidence, something that just couldn't happen that relates
Speaker 3: to your defeat deceased friend. And then there is a
Speaker 3: physical evidence where something physical happens. For example, in my case,
Speaker 3: when Fari Ackerman dropped me a line, he literally a
Speaker 3: document was changed physically with ink while I was alone
Speaker 3: in the house. And then the fourth category, which I
Speaker 3: think is maybe the most compelling today, is technological evidence.
Speaker 3: In other words, if there are spirits on the other
Speaker 3: side anxious to contact does like we're anxious to hear
Speaker 3: from them, it may be that using our technology, whether
Speaker 3: it's our cell phones or other devices that we have,
Speaker 3: may be the easiest way for them to make a
Speaker 3: mark with us and get our attention. And that led
Speaker 3: me to think about whether AI could actually be a
Speaker 3: useful tool in trying to augment our effort to contact
Speaker 3: someone that we knew very closely from the other side.
Speaker 3: And so it was you know, my new series, The
Speaker 3: Naughty Adventures of Scarlett May Blossom, and working so much
Speaker 3: with AI night, afternoon and throughout the day for over
Speaker 3: a year to create that three and a half hours
Speaker 3: of programming, so much work creating characters using AI to
Speaker 3: explore new things that had never been done before. That
Speaker 3: with my interest in life after death, I thought maybe
Speaker 3: there's a way to put these two together, and I
Speaker 3: thought that that would be something of interest to your listeners.
Speaker 4: Good for you. Do you think AI is going to
Speaker 4: be our answer?
Speaker 3: Well, it's one answer. I mean, it answers many different things.
Speaker 3: You know, for producers of television or films, it's an
Speaker 3: answer to solving certain kinds of problems. It's not good
Speaker 3: for all kinds of productions, but certainly for a comedy
Speaker 3: like I produced, something that's sort of in between a cartoon,
Speaker 3: let's say, and a conventional comedy, it can help you
Speaker 3: create a lot of shots and scenes and characters. Now
Speaker 3: for AI using it in terms of trying to contact
Speaker 3: the other side, I think, and some of this is theory,
Speaker 3: but I put it to a test that worked. I
Speaker 3: think that at the heart of it, there has to
Speaker 3: be someone that you've lost who was very very close
Speaker 3: to you. I don't know whether it's love or deep friendship,
Speaker 3: but it's somebody who you shared part of your life
Speaker 3: with that was just indelible between the two of you,
Speaker 3: that you would never forget the things that you did.
Speaker 3: And in my case. It was a boyhood friend. His
Speaker 3: first name is Jeff, who I met in third grade,
Speaker 3: and you know, we were just friends through the decades.
Speaker 3: When we were children, we made amateur films together that
Speaker 3: caught the attention of Forrest j Ackerman, the editor of
Speaker 3: Famous Monsters. We got discovered when we were young, got
Speaker 3: some help there. I was very very close to Jeff,
Speaker 3: and he died in twenty seventeen. Had an extraordinary career.
Speaker 3: I want to mention. He became an important photographer for
Speaker 3: the Smithsonian Museum Museum of American History. He was the
Speaker 3: photographer they would get to photograph the new president every
Speaker 3: four years at the inauguration.
Speaker 4: That's a prestigious job.
Speaker 3: Paul ye yep. And he did have a brain tumor,
Speaker 3: and they thought that they had mitigated it, so he
Speaker 3: survived about ten years after I first thought I was
Speaker 3: going to lose him, in about two thousand and five
Speaker 3: or two thousand and six, but he passed and for me,
Speaker 3: his death, you know, apart from my parents lost both
Speaker 3: of my parents, but his death had a very special
Speaker 3: kind of impact on me because we were so close
Speaker 3: from the time that we were children, and I had
Speaker 3: wanted to hear from him, and I think George I
Speaker 3: first heard from him in a different way that did
Speaker 3: not involve AI. I want to make sure we have
Speaker 3: enough time before a break if I'm going to get
Speaker 3: into that part of the story. Could you cue me
Speaker 3: in on that. I'm good, okay, So let me tell
Speaker 3: you the first thing that happened related to Jeff. We
Speaker 3: always used to go see science fiction double features together.
Speaker 3: His father would take us monster movies. We love them.
Speaker 3: Jeff would collect all the ads of these movies from
Speaker 3: the newspapers and he would make a scrap book and
Speaker 3: that scrap book was a valuable item that I envied
Speaker 3: for many years. Eventually he gifted it to me just
Speaker 3: a few years before he died, with a beautiful inscription
Speaker 3: to me. And it had some of our favorite movies.
Speaker 3: The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad done by Ray Harry Houses,
Speaker 3: the Invisible Boy that had Robbie the robot who was
Speaker 3: also in Forbidden Planet. And then there was The Sign
Speaker 3: of Zoro, a movie we loved because we used to
Speaker 3: play Zoro together. We'd have a Zoro set you'd buy,
Speaker 3: you know, sponsored by Disney I think are a toy company,
Speaker 3: and we'd have swords and there'd be a mask.
Speaker 4: I used to do that too and run around the neighborhood.
Speaker 3: There you go. So one night I was looking at
Speaker 3: the scrap book and I saw the sign of Zoro
Speaker 3: and I just started speaking out aloud to Jeff alone
Speaker 3: in my office, and I said, Jeff, I just can't
Speaker 3: believe you don't still exist somewhere in this universe. Where
Speaker 3: are you? I miss you so much. I would love
Speaker 3: to hear from you. Now, here's the incredible thing, and
Speaker 3: here's where you get physical evidence. The next morning, I
Speaker 3: woke up, I went down to my office where my
Speaker 3: wallet was. I needed to look for some cash because
Speaker 3: the maid was coming during that day. I opened my
Speaker 3: wallet and staring me in the face is a twenty
Speaker 3: dollars bill that has the word Zoro written on the
Speaker 3: twenty dollars bill.
Speaker 2: One would say synchronicities, right, yeah, that's another of those
Speaker 2: four categories.
Speaker 3: How many twenty dollar bills have you ever seen in
Speaker 3: your life that have Zora written?
Speaker 1: Zero?
Speaker 3: The morning after, you looked at the adverst sign of
Speaker 3: Zora and remember your friend and how you used to
Speaker 3: play that together. But the other thing is it has
Speaker 3: the White House on the twenty dollar bill, and zoro
Speaker 3: is written above the White House, and he was the
Speaker 3: guarded to photographed the presidents, you see. And then there
Speaker 3: was another clue because the way the rs were written
Speaker 3: z R R, the second R looked more like a
Speaker 3: V than an R. You know, sometimes you make two
Speaker 3: rs hastily. Well, in this case, the second one looked
Speaker 3: kind of like a V. I searched for examples of
Speaker 3: his handwriting, and I found where he had written when
Speaker 3: he was probably around thirteen years old, the word horror
Speaker 3: you like horror movies. Two rs, and the second R
Speaker 3: was like a V. It looked exactly like on the
Speaker 3: twenty dollars bill. Wow. So at that point, George, nobody
Speaker 3: could have convinced me that I hadn't heard from my
Speaker 3: friend Jeff then and there now Jeff is the one
Speaker 3: I tried to contact with this system I devised using AI.
Speaker 3: Actually in the last few weeks it occurred to me
Speaker 3: I tested it, and why did I get results?
Speaker 4: So tell us what happened? How did you create it?
Speaker 3: All? Right? So it's a multi step process. It is
Speaker 3: kind of a way that you could take the medium
Speaker 3: out of the equation. If your listeners have some fundamental
Speaker 3: technical knowledge. You have to know that. There are certain
Speaker 3: AI programs that can help you do some very specific things.
Speaker 3: I'll mention the programs and I'll tell you what I
Speaker 3: did with them, because ultimately, what I was trying to
Speaker 3: do was create a message where you would see the
Speaker 3: face of Jeff talking, bringing him back to life as
Speaker 3: an AI character or avatar as you will, with his
Speaker 3: actual voice. That's the other element that if somebody wants
Speaker 3: to try this, you need a recording of the voice
Speaker 3: of the person you are close to. You need their
Speaker 3: actual voice. There's a program called eleven Labs, and with that,
Speaker 3: if you have the recording of the voice, you can
Speaker 3: plug it into eleven Labs and have that voice say
Speaker 3: something else, something new that you've written, something the person
Speaker 3: never really said when they were alive. With that voice, yeah,
Speaker 3: and you can get close to the exact voice of
Speaker 3: the person. And it takes experimenting to manipulate all the
Speaker 3: variables to make it very very close to sound just
Speaker 3: like that person. I got it very very close to
Speaker 3: sound like Jeff. You know, maybe after the break or something,
Speaker 3: I could even play a sample of what was why
Speaker 3: I needed that message and why what I wanted to
Speaker 3: say I'm sorry, no, because there's so much compassion and
Speaker 3: love and friendship between me and Jeff. Now, some people
Speaker 3: might think that, you know, they might feel that the
Speaker 3: whole subject of tampering with trying to contact the dead
Speaker 3: is something that we shouldn't be doing. There people that
Speaker 3: have that religious feeling, okay, that then they won't be
Speaker 3: the ones to do it. I didn't feel that way.
Speaker 3: The message you want is for the friend to be
Speaker 3: saying to you, I see you now, I know you're
Speaker 3: you're trying to bring me back. I remember some of
Speaker 3: the great times we had together, and then mention a
Speaker 3: few of those great times and to say, I know
Speaker 3: that you want me to send you a message. And
Speaker 3: here's what I'm going to try to do. I'm going
Speaker 3: to try to send you a message that you will
Speaker 3: recognize it's really coming for me because it's going to
Speaker 3: be something that we share together that nobody else is
Speaker 3: going to know. And you do it first with the
Speaker 3: voice again. I use a program called eleven Labs to
Speaker 3: create that voice, and there are variables that you have
Speaker 3: to play with. You can you can tell it to
Speaker 3: make the voice exactly like the voice you've got you
Speaker 3: can pool around with another dial and tell how stable
Speaker 3: you want the voice, whether you wanted to exaggerate, and
Speaker 3: by what percent, whether you want to make the delivery
Speaker 3: kind of slower or faster. So you know, I did
Speaker 3: it around ten times before I said, you know, that's
Speaker 3: really close. It sounds like it's Jeff talking to me.
Speaker 3: And then you need to bring You need the face.
Speaker 3: You need a really perfect picture of your friend's face
Speaker 3: if you plug into another AI program. I'm sure there
Speaker 3: are multiple programs. I used one called DD Studios. It's
Speaker 3: a D and then a hyphen and ID, and that's
Speaker 3: a program where you can get still pictures to talk
Speaker 3: according to a script that you've written.
Speaker 4: Do they work on your smartphone or a computer?
Speaker 3: You use the computer, You use the computer, you plug
Speaker 3: in the photo, you find a really good photo, and
Speaker 3: then you plug in the actual recording you've made of
Speaker 3: the voice. At that point you're no longer typing the script.
Speaker 3: You type the script for eleven Labs and you've got
Speaker 3: the voice. You plug it into d ID and it
Speaker 3: will generate your friend looking right at you and talking
Speaker 3: and saying what you wanted the friend to say. Now,
Speaker 3: what's the purpose of all this using AI for this,
Speaker 3: it's meditative, it's consciousness, it's it's using it as a
Speaker 3: device to try to augment a connection between you and
Speaker 3: the spirit of the disease sprint. If there really is
Speaker 3: a continued existence for someone you felt really close to,
Speaker 3: it's like allure to tell them that your focus is
Speaker 3: on them. You want to hear from them. You're concentrating
Speaker 3: on them as if they're alive again, and then you
Speaker 3: wait to see what's going to happen. And for me,
Speaker 3: within thirty six hours of doing this, I feel that
Speaker 3: I heard from my friend Jeff in five different ways.
Speaker 3: All Right. I think it was a success. May not
Speaker 3: be a success for everyone. You may have to try
Speaker 3: it a lot of times. Some people will be disappointed.
Speaker 3: But I think some people will find that if your
Speaker 3: connection with that person was strong enough, you may hear
Speaker 3: from them.
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