An app being released later this year promises to help you 'speak' to your loved ones after they have passed away.

The app uses a single selfie and voice recordings to create realistic avatars of people that you can interact with in the virtual world.

The software could also be used to allow parents to remotely read to their children via an avatar or reanimate dead celebrities for use in interactive virtual games.

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Oben co-founder Nikhil Jain (left) and his business partner Adam Zheng set up the company so that they could remain connected to their families by 'leaving behind' a virtual copy of themselves (Nikhil's avatar pictured right) during long travels.

OBEN AVATARS Hyper realistic 3D renderings modelled on your appearance and voice could soon become the norm when it comes to interacting with other people on the internet. The avatars are the creation of Oben, a Pasadena startup firm that has been working since 2014 to create virtual identities for use online. By using artificial intelligence, Oben can use selfies and voice recordings to create a 3D model that looks and talks just like you. The software uses machine learning to improve with use, so that it can more convincingly portray your personality. Oben is hoping to release an app later this year that will allow you to create your own avatar to share with friends and family. Advertisement

The avatars are the creation of Oben, a Pasadena startup firm that has been working since 2014 to create virtual identities for use online.

The software uses machine learning to improve with use, so that it can more convincingly portray your personality.

'You can just take a quick selfie and a small sample of your voice and we combine it for you,' obEN CEO and co-founder Nikhil R. Jain told Pasedena Star News.

'It makes a very personalised avatar which is speaking in your voice and moving like you.

'Once we have your voiceprint we can actually create new content in your voice, which would be attached to your avatar.

'And it can be employed into different kinds of scenarios. So you could actually tell this avatar, "Read a book to put my kids to sleep".'

The California company, set up by Jain and Adam Zheng, is hoping to release an app later this year that will allow you to create your own avatar to share with friends and family.

It could even allow for the creation of avatar performances by dead singers or even allow you to join in with them in virtual reality karaoke programmes.

And images and audio recordings of lost loved ones could even be used to create avatars based on them, or to keep the memory alive of people who pass on after creating a digital avatar.

Writing in a statement on the firm's website, its founders said: 'Oben was created out of a personal desire for the founders to remain connected to their families by 'leaving behind' a virtual copy of themselves during long travels.

'With the rapid development of social media connectivity, augmented reality, virtual reality and the internet of things, Oben's suite of artificial intelligence products humanizes and personalizes your digital experiences.'

Creating an avatar is still a time consuming process, according to reports in MIT Technology Review.

It takes around eight hours to generate a head and shoulders replication from a photo and between two and twenty minutes of audio recordings.

The avatars that will feature in the upcoming app are likely to be less accurate than the ones built by Oben up to this point, but they will be created much quicker.

But as technology progresses, it seems likely that home users will be able to create increasingly realistic portrayals of themselves.

And Oben is looking at the possibility of creating whole body avatars at some point in the future.

Hyper realistic 3D renderings (pictured) modelled on your appearance and voice could soon become the norm for interacting with other people on the internet. California firm Oben is hoping to release an app later this year that will allow you to create your own avatar