Staying in virtual contact with a loved one after their death is something that several start-ups offer with the help of artificial intelligence – a universe whose contours are still unclear and which raises many questions.
Ryu Sun-yun sits in front of a microphone and a giant screen showing her husband, who died a few months earlier. “Honey. It’s me,” he told her. Through tears, she answers him, starting a conversation of sorts in this demonstration video.
Knowing he had terminal cancer, 76-year-old South Korean Lee Byeong-hwal asked DeepBrain AI, which filmed him for several hours, to create a digital replica, likely to answer questions.
“We don’t create new content,” meaning phrases that the deceased would never have spoken or written in a journal and then validated, explains Joseph Murphy, head of development at DeepBrain AI, on the topic of “Re;memory”. ” program.
The same principle applies to StoryFile, which uses 92-year-old Star Trek actor William Shatner to demonstrate on its website.
“Our approach is to capture that individual’s magic as long as possible” and while he was alive, “and then use AI,” summarizes Stephen Smith, head of StoryFile, which claims several thousand users of its Life service.
In China, funeral homes offer AI interaction with the deceased during their funeral.
In early April, entrepreneur and engineer Pratik Desai caused a stir when he suggested “starting the audio or video recording” of “your parents, your elders and your loved ones,” estimating it from “the end of this year.” It is possible to create an autonomous avatar of a deceased person and he is working on a project in this direction.
The message, posted on Twitter, sparked a storm that went so far that he defended himself as a “grave robber” days later. “This is a very personal matter and I sincerely apologize for hurting people.”
“This is an ethically sensitive area and we are taking great precautions,” Stephen Smith told StoryFile.
After the death of her best friend in a car accident in 2015, the Russian engineer Eugenia Kyuda, who had emigrated to California, created an interface, a “chatbot”, christened it Roman and fed it thousands of text messages she had sent to his relatives, to create a virtual double.
Then, in 2017, the company launched Replica, which offers some of the most advanced personalized chatbots out there, with some users chatting to several hours a day.
But despite the previous novel, Replica is “not a platform designed to recreate a deceased loved one,” warns a spokesperson.
London-based Somnium Space intends to rely on the metaverse to create virtual clones while users are alive, which after death will have their own existence in this parallel universe without human intervention.
“Of course it’s not for everyone,” admits general manager Artur Sychov in a video posted to YouTube about his product called Live Forever, which he announced for the end of the year. “Would I like to meet my grandfather who is into artificial intelligence? If you want, you can.”
The question arises as to the virtual existence of a deceased loved one who, thanks to generative AI, could say things that he never said before his death.
“The challenges are philosophical, not technical,” admits Joseph Murphy. “I don’t think society isn’t ready yet. There’s a line we didn’t want to cross.
“It’s a niche for us, not a growth sector,” the manager said of Re;memory, which has a few dozen users, while DeepBrain focuses primarily on avatars in the workplace. “I don’t expect it to start.”
“I think interacting with an AI version of a grieving person can (…) help them move forward with a minimum of trauma, especially with the help of a professional,” says Candi Cann, a current professor at Baylor University who is researching this issue in South Korea.
Mari Dias, a professor of medical psychology at Johnson & Wales University, has interviewed many of her grieving patients about virtual contact with the deceased. “The most common answer is, ‘I don’t trust the AI. I’m afraid she’ll say something I won’t accept.’ (…) I get the impression that they think they have no control over what the Avatar does.