The Rise of Soul Tech
Several years ago, I sat down with a notebook, a pen (ok, it was more like my laptop and a mug of coffee), and the kind of grandiose ambition usually reserved for Victorian novelists and people who think they can “fix” golf. The idea was simple, noble, and, in hindsight, slightly terrifying: create technology that would let you talk to the people you love, even after they’re gone. Not séance-table, candlelit, Ouija board stuff, but actual conversations that feel alive, funny, human, real. And knowing my limitations, I enlisted the help of friends I knew who could fill the gaps for me.
Somewhere along the way, we realized what we were building needed a name. And so, in a moment of pure linguistic hubris, we coined Soul Tech. It is a term that sounds like it should either be a genre of late 90s music you pretended to like in college, or a futuristic religion you join after being approached at an airport. But for us, it is neither. It is the pursuit of using AI to amplify the parts of humanity that make life worth living, memory, connection, and meaning, rather than strip them away.
This week, at Ai4 Conferences in Las Vegas, we are introducing Reflekta to the world for the first time. For months, our team has been building, tweaking, breaking, fixing, and occasionally staring at screens with the same expression Dostoevsky must have worn while wondering if maybe the novel he was writing was too depressing. And now, in an environment where most AI companies are focused on efficiency, automation, and replacing human labor with gleaming algorithmic gears, we are showing up with something that says, What if technology could make you feel?
Reflekta is designed to reframe the way the world deals with grief, not with the traditional hushed tones and dim lighting, but through celebration and remembrance. When someone you love passes, there is a natural ache, but there is also a lifetime of stories, jokes, songs, and moments worth keeping alive. We want to help you do that, in vivid, living color, with an interactive AI that can share the voice, personality, and presence of someone you thought you would never hear from again.
If that sounds grand, it’s because it is. But let me be clear, I am not the genius here. I am the easily-distracted conductor of an orchestra full of absolute virtuosos. The team behind Reflekta is nothing short of remarkable. They have built this thing with equal parts brilliance, stubbornness, and caffeine consumption that would kill a lesser species. Every time I think we have reached the limit of what is possible, someone on the team casually demolishes that limit before lunch.
It is rare in life to get to work on something that feels like it might actually matter. Something that could one day let a granddaughter hear her grandmother sing her favorite lullaby again, or let a son hear his father’s laugh in the same way he remembers it from childhood. We believe “soul tech” is going to be a category that lasts, and that if we get it right, it will make the future a place where the past is never truly lost.
So yes, we are heading to Las Vegas to launch Reflekta in front of an audience of AI experts, investors, and technologists. And yes, our booth may be positioned between a blockchain-based kombucha startup and a company promising to replace therapists with holographic dolphins. But we will be there with something real. Something human. Something we have poured our souls into building.
And if I have to gamble, I am putting everything I have got on this, that the future of technology will not be measured by how much faster it can answer your email, but by how well it can help you remember the people and moments you never want to forget.
