A “digital doppelganger” is an AI-generated version of a person designed to mimic their speech, appearance or behaviors. For example, data brokers may put together a composite electronic profile of a person using their financial or purchase history to sell to advertisers, insurers or political campaigns to predict future behavior.
These can take several forms, according to a blog post on Mindful Spark:
- Voice clones – AI models that learn a person’s tone, rhythm and vocal nuances.
- Text mimics – Systems that replicate a person’s writing style.
- Visual avatars/deepfakes – AI-generated videos using a person’s likeness.
- Behavioral models – Predictive algorithms that learn a person’s shopping choices, music tastes or political opinions.
Personal data can be harvested from a range of sources, including cars, mobile phones and internet-connected devices, according to an article on The Conversation.
Deeper dive
A digital twin allows investigators to build and test things in cyberspace before deploying them in the real world, Alicia Cameron and Sarah Vivienne Bentley wrote in The Conversation. For example, people could build and stress-test infrastructure like bridges or water supply pipes under different conditions.
In health care, clinicians can use scans to create virtual models of the human body to plan surgery or study the impact of drugs, or simulate a clinical trial.