The technology is already advanced.
Just think of director Morgan Neville, who is in the film Roadrunner from 2021 – on television chef Anthony Bourdain – manipulated Bourdain’s voice using artificial intelligence.
Plus, he made the deceased star chef say three lines in the movie that he never uttered.
This cinematic choice aroused great indignation.
The HereAfter AI app is limited to answering questions that the dead themselves answered while they were alive.
And this is precisely one of the weaknesses of many new technological solutions in this area.
They can only show phrases and memories formulated by the deceased, but they cannot address new topics or take into account the relationship with their interlocutor.
Not yet at least.
Because several companies are developing even more sophisticated digital avatars that can simulate communication with the dead.
One of which is the American start-up You, Only Virtual (“you, but virtually”), which will launch a platform next year that collects text messages, emails and conversations between users in real time.
When a service user dies, the thousands of interactions are used to generate a so-called ‘person’, with whom other service users can continue to communicate.
The idea is to use large datasets to create algorithms that closely mimic the communication patterns of the deceased.
The founder of the platform, Justin Harrison, is motivated by his mother’s illness, who has advanced cancer. With her mother’s imminent death, he began to think about creating a bond with her that would last into the afterlife.
According to Harrison, the platform offers people “an unprecedented opportunity” to “maintain a connection with the dead that is authentic, nuanced and unique.”
Remember forever
Critical voices point out that all of this new technology entails ethical dilemmas.
It’s not just about consent and privacy, it’s about the natural grieving process as well – technology threatens to prolong and obscure it.
This is the concern of Erin Thompson, a clinical psychologist who specializes in bereavement and who spoke to the MIT Technology Review platform about the prospects of the new technology.
“In the acute phase of bereavement, people can have a strong sense of unreality and are often unable to accept that the deceased is gone,” he says, explaining that acceptance can become even more difficult if the person in the digital universe continues to exist.
