Sharon Melzer, 24, has long believed in manifestation, or the idea that she can bring her hopes and dreams to life by visualizing them.
Ms. Melzer, who lives in New York City and works in communications, has been making vision boards since the age of 14. She was influenced by her mother’s reading of the 2006 blockbuster book “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne, and would cut out photographs from magazines and glue them to a poster board.
But pictures depicting models didn’t feel right. When creating a vision board, you’re supposed to be “as specific as possible,” Ms. Melzer said.
Now, thanks to improved artificial intelligence technology, she can be — by putting herself, or an avatar that closely resembles her, in videos depicting her ideal future.
These digital vision boards are a little like movie trailers showing coming attractions. In one, Ms. Melzer is flying on a private plane, giving a keynote address to a packed room and getting a notification on her computer that she reached 100,000 subscribers on YouTube.
Ms. Melzer, who will soon start a master’s program in public relations and corporate communications, hopes to become a content creator in tech, A.I. and marketing, and eventually build her own marketing and public relations agency.
She watches the videos — about 20 now, mostly made using a platform called Freepik — when she wakes up in the morning and before she goes to bed. She said that by doing this instead of scrolling through Instagram or TikTok, she’s focusing on her own goals, not “other people achieving their goals.”
Artificial intelligence has already entered so many different areas of our lives. And now, it’s being employed to show us our potential futures. In April, Harvard Business Review published a study on how people were using generative A.I. “Organizing my life” and “finding purpose” ranked in second and third place, right behind “therapy/companionship.”
Using A.I. for manifestation has taken off in the past year, said Catherine Goetze, the C.E.O. of CatGPT, an A.I. educational platform. She pointed to a trend that went viral on TikTok in late 2024 in which users asked ChatGPT to have a conversation with them about what they wanted in life.
Manifesters can also use ChatGPT to create a photo of their older selves and then insert it into video generation tools like Runway, Google’s Veo 3 and Kling A.I. Or they can use an app like Freepik, as Ms. Melzer does, to make an avatar that is inserted into videos.
The technology to make video, in particular, has greatly improved, Ms. Goetze said, but making these videos is still for a “medium-advanced A.I. user,” added Amy Wu, the founder of an app called Manifest.
These avatars aren’t identical to the human they depict — some are even “a bit creepy” Ms. Melzer said. But they’re “really close.”
To Ms. Goetz of CatGPT, the videos look real enough that she is compelled to remind users they are not “crystal balls,” she said. “The computer has been trained to reflect back at you what you tell it, so if it shows you as a billionaire, it doesn’t mean you are going to be a billionaire. It just means you told it you want to be a billionaire.”
Roxie Nafousi, the author of “Manifest: 7 Steps to Living Your Best Life,” warned that “just watching a video is not enough.” It’s simply the first step before “working on yourself, your belief systems, your mind-set, taking action, stepping out of your comfort zone.”
As long as the limitations are known, some mental health experts say making videos of your dream life can have value. “One of the biggest blocks I experience with people when I start working with them is they have trouble having a clear vision,” said John Mark Shaw, an executive and life coach based in New York City. He said he was encouraging clients to play around with A.I. to see if it was helpful.
Matt Stewart, 35, a design consultant in Brooklyn, said he had started making videos of himself succeeding at upcoming tasks, “so when I am actually there, my body is used to it,” he said.
Two weeks before he appeared on a podcast for work, he took footage from the actual podcast and added himself to it using Runway. When he entered the studio for the actual taping, “it felt more like a continuation than a big event.”
But for some, these life trailers are a step too far.
Alexandria Roemer, who lives in Austin, Texas, and is building a women’s leadership retreat company, uses ChatGPT to help her hone her personal and professional visions. “I say, ‘Ask me a series of questions that help me get clear on every single facet of what my dream life looks like’.”
But that’s where Ms. Roemer, 32, leaves it. She worries that just as the movie version of a book can be disappointing, so too can a movie version of your future.
Instead, she said, “I can close my eyes and I can imagine.”
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