A man-made intelligence (AI) agent that may control dreams, like within the movie 'Inception', has appeared.

Specialized media outlet Unity AI recently reported that a startup called Prophetic has developed an AI system called ‘Morpheus-1’.

In line with this, Morpheus-1 is realized through the ‘lucid dream’ stage.

Lucid dreaming refers to a state by which the dreamer is aware that she or he is dreaming and might even control the dream. This phenomenon typically occurs in the course of the REM sleep stage, during which activity within the prefrontal cortex increases.

Morpheus-1 monitors brain activity, detects REM sleep, and stimulates brain regions related to lucid dreaming. The goal is to induce and control lucid dreams using ultrasonic holograms if you go to sleep while wearing a headset with Morpheus-1 in-built.

First, brain activity is monitored by combining EEG (electroencephalogram) and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) technologies. It is a approach to measuring the electrical activity of the brain by identifying the timing (EEG) and placement (MRI) of brain activity, and later identifying what a dream is when a certain signal occurs in a certain a part of the brain and learning this right into a model.

When the model that has learned dreams later detects that it’s dreaming, it transmits a signal of the specified state to the brain surface through focused ultrasound stimulation (tFUS).

Ultrasound stimulation stimulates specific areas of the brain through the skull. The reason is that it doesn’t use separate surgery or invasive methods, and doesn’t cause serious heating or damage to brain tissue.

The Morpheus-1 model is predicated on the 'Generative Ultrasonic Transformer' architecture with 103 million parameters. This model is designed to concurrently process EEG and MRI data and create targets for brain stimulation through focused ultrasound stimulation.

EEG and MRI data are converted into vectors using an embedding model. On this process, the transformer integrates the 2 signals through an ‘attentiobn mechanism’ to set a brain stimulation goal.

To attain this, the model uses brain states as input within the pre-training phase and learns learn how to predict subsequent brain states, after which the pre-trained model is fine-tuned to predict spatial targets for brain stimulation. This fine-tuning goals to induce the specified brain state by reproducing the neuron signal patterns observed during lucid dreaming.

The researchers said that Morpheus, which induces and controls lucid dreams, could be applied to a wide selection of fields, including medicine, creativity development, and entertainment.

In addition to exploring possibilities for treating PTSD and anxiety, the study could also transform the best way people explore creativity by allowing them to take control of their dreams for inspiration.

In fact, they said also they are reviewing ethical issues comparable to personal information protection issues that will arise during this process. The goal is to launch a beta program soon, establish a headset production system this fall, and release a headset called 'Halo' in the autumn of 2025.

“Morpheus-1 represents a major breakthrough toward a future that may change the boundary between dreams and reality and supply controlled access to dreams,” United AI said. “It’s needed,” he commented.

Reporter Lim Da-jun ydj@aitimes.com