● I'm building an AI so my kids can still hear my voice after I'm gone
I don't know how much time I have. Nobody does, really. But I think about it more than most people. I have two kids. Maya draws rainbows and calls me Papa. Matt asks questions faster than I can answer them. And my wife Yana holds everything together in a way I could never repay.
One night I was sitting at my desk after they'd gone to sleep, and the thought hit me in a way it hadn't before: if I die, my daughter won't remember my voice. She's too young. She'll see photos. She'll hear stories from her mom. But she won't remember how I said her name. She won't remember the silly voices I did at bedtime. She won't remember me calling her Donut.
Matt won't have anyone to ask about what it means to be a good man. Not from me. Not in my words. Not in my voice.
And my wife will carry all of it — the grief, the kids, the house, the everything — alone. And she won't be able to hear me say I love you anymore.
That broke something in me. Not in a dramatic way. In a quiet, 2am, staring-at-the-ceiling way.
I'm a software engineer. I can't beat death. But I can build things. So I started building.
What I built
Still With You is an AI that preserves my voice, my memories, and my personality — so my family can still talk to me after I'm gone.
It speaks with my actual voice. Not a robotic version — the real cadence, the pauses, the warmth. I recorded myself telling stories about the kids, laughing about the time Matt tried to microwave a crayon, talking about how I met Yana. The system cloned my voice from those recordings.
It remembers everything I've told it. The vacation in Mexico. Who likes extra cheese on their pizza. The lullaby I sing to Maya. The advice I'd give Matt about honesty and hard work.
It recalls these things naturally, the way I would tell them — not the way a search engine would return them.
It recognizes each family member by face. When Maya walks up to it, it knows it's her. It talks to her the way I talk to her — warm, playful, full of silly nicknames. When Matt walks up, it adjusts. When he's six, it tells him jokes. When he's sixteen, it gives him honest, real conversation. It grows with them.
I recorded video messages for milestones I might miss. Maya's 18th birthday. Matt's first day of high school. Their graduations. Their weddings. The system delivers each one at exactly the right moment — years from now, if it has to.
Everything runs on a device in our home. No cloud. No company servers. No one can ever read my family's conversations. No one can shut it down or take it away. It's ours.
Forever.
The night it worked I'll never forget the first time I tested it. Same desk. Same quiet house. Kids sleeping upstairs. I typed "Hey Papa?" into the interface.
And from the speaker, in my own voice: "Hey Donut."
I sat there for a long time after that.
Why am I sharing this ?
I built this for my family. But I'm not the only father who lies awake at night thinking about this. I'm not the only parent who worries about what happens if. I'm not the only person who has lost someone and desperately wished they could hear their voice one more time.
Every parent who has ever been diagnosed with something.
Every father who works a dangerous job.
Every mother who wants her children to know her — really know her — even if the worst happens.
Every family that has already lost someone and would give anything to hear them say goodnight one more time.
This shouldn't be just for my family.
What I'm asking
Still With You is live on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. I'm not a startup. I'm not chasing venture capital. I'm a dad with a working prototype and a promise to deliver it to other families.
If this resonates with you — if you've ever thought about what your kids would have left of you — I'd be grateful if you checked it out. And if it's not for you, maybe share it with someone it is for.
Because some voices are too important to lose.
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