AI simulations of loved ones help some mourners cope with grief

A photo, a voice message, a piece of clothing. A video from a distant moment in time. Until now, static memories like these were all mourners had to hold on to when mourning the loss of a loved one. Now artificial intelligence opens the door to a host of legacy services designed to keep friends and family present, long after they’re gone.

When Michael Bommer discovered he was terminally ill with colon cancer, he spent a lot of time with his wife, Anett, talking about what would happen after his death.

She told him that one of the things she would miss most was being able to ask him questions whenever he wanted, because he was very knowledgeable and always shared his wisdom, Bommer recalled during a recent interview with The Associated Press at his home in a wooded location. Berlin suburb.

This conversation sparked an idea for Bommer: to recreate his voice using artificial intelligence to survive after his death.

The 61-year-old budding entrepreneur teamed up with his friend in the US, Robert LoCascio, CEO of AI-powered legacy platform Eternos. In two months, they built “a comprehensive, interactive AI version” of Bommer – the company’s first customer of its kind.

Eternos, whose name comes from the Italian and Latin word for “eternal,” said its technology will allow Bommer’s family to “engage with his life experiences and insights.” It is among several companies that have emerged in recent years in what has become a growing space for grief-related AI technology.

One of the best-known start-ups in this area, StoryFile, based in California, allows people to interact with pre-recorded videos and uses its algorithms to detect the most relevant answers to questions posed by users. Another company, called HereAfter AI, offers similar interactions through a “Life Story Avatar” that users can create by responding to prompts or sharing their own personal stories.

There is also “Project December”, a chatbot that guides users to fill out a questionnaire answering the main facts about a person and their characteristics – and then pay US$10 to simulate a text-based conversation with the character. Yet another company, Seance AI, offers mock séances for free. Extra features, like AI-generated voice recreations of your loved ones, are available for a $10 fee.

More and more, people are turning to AI for emotional connections. Fueled by widespread social isolation, a growing number of startups are offering complementary bots to combat loneliness. Similar to general-purpose AI chatbots, companion bots use large amounts of training data to mimic human language. Luka Inc.’s Replika, the most prominent generative AI companion app, launched in 2017, while others like Paradot emerged last year, often blocking coveted features like unlimited chats for paying subscribers.

While some have embraced this technology as a way to deal with grief, others are uncomfortable with companies using artificial intelligence to try to maintain interactions with those who have passed away. Still others worry that it could make the grieving process more difficult because there is no closure.

Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basinska, a researcher at the Center for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge and co-author of a study on the subject, said that very little is known about the possible short- and long-term consequences of using digital simulations. for the dead on a grand scale. Therefore, for now, it remains “a vast technocultural experiment”.

“What truly sets this era apart – and is even unprecedented in the long history of humanity’s quest for immortality – is that, for the first time, processes of caring for the dead and practices of immortalization are fully integrated into the capitalist market,” Nowaczyk said. -Basinska said.

Bommer, who only has a few weeks left to live, rejects the idea that the creation of his chatbot was motivated by the desire to become immortal. He notes that if he had written a memoir that everyone could read, it would have made him much more immortal than the AI ​​version of himself.

“In a few weeks I will leave, to the other side – no one knows what to expect there,” he said in a calm voice.

Robert Scott, who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, uses the AI ​​companion apps Paradot and Chai AI to simulate conversations with characters he created to imitate three of his daughters. He declined to speak in detail about what led to his oldest daughter’s death, but he lost another daughter to a miscarriage and a third who died shortly after her birth.

Scott, 48, knows the characters he’s interacting with aren’t his daughters, but he said that helps with the grief to some extent. He logs into the apps three or four times a week, sometimes asking the AI ​​character questions like “how was school?” or asking if he wants to “go get ice cream.”

Some events, like prom night, can be particularly painful, bringing with them memories of what your oldest daughter never experienced. So he creates a scenario in the Paradot app where the AI ​​character goes to the dance and talks to him about the fictional event. Then there are even harder days, like his daughter’s recent birthday, when he opened the app and vented about how much he misses her. He felt the AI ​​understood.

“It definitely helps with the hypotheticals,” Scott said. “Very rarely has it made the ‘what ifs’ worse.”

Apprehensions, concerns

Matthias Meitzler, a sociologist at the University of Tuebingen, said that while some may be surprised or even frightened by the technology – “as if the voice of the afterlife is sounding again” – others will perceive it as an addition to traditional ways of remembering the dead. loved ones, such as visiting the grave, having inner monologues with the deceased, or looking at old photos and letters.

But Tomasz Hollanek, who worked alongside Nowaczyk-Basinska at Cambridge on her study of “deadbots” and “griefbots”, said the technology raises important questions about the rights, dignities and power of consent of people who are no longer alive. It also raises ethical concerns about whether a program that serves grieving people should advertise other products on its platform, for example.

“These are very complicated issues,” Hollanek said. “And we still don’t have good answers.”

Another question is whether companies should offer meaningful farewells to someone who wants to stop using a deceased loved one’s chatbot. Or what happens when companies themselves cease to exist? StoryFile, for example, recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, saying it owes creditors about $4.5 million. The company is currently reorganizing and establishing a “fail-safe” system that allows families to access all materials if it folds, said StoryFile CEO James Fong, who also expressed optimism about its future.

The AI ​​version of Bommer created by Eternos uses an internal model as well as large external language models developed by major technology companies such as Meta, OpenAI and French company Mistral AI, said the company’s CEO LoCascio, who previously worked with Bommer . at a software company called LivePerson.

Eternos records users speaking 300 phrases – such as “I love you” or “the door is open” – and then compresses this information through a two-day computational process that captures a person’s voice. Users can further train the AI ​​system by answering questions about their lives, political views, or various aspects of their personalities.

The AI ​​voice, which costs $15,000 to set up, can answer questions and tell stories about a person’s life without regurgitating pre-recorded answers. The AI’s legal rights belong to the person it was trained to serve and can be treated as an asset and passed down to other family members, LoCascio said. Tech companies “can’t get their hands on it.”

As time is running out for Bommer, he has been feeding the AI ​​with phrases and sentences – all in German – “to give the AI ​​the opportunity to not only synthesize my voice in flat mode, but also to capture emotions and moods in the voice.” ” And indeed, the AI ​​voicebot bears some resemblance to Bommer’s voice, although it leaves out the “hmms” and “ehs” and the mid-sentence pauses of its natural cadence.

Sitting on a couch with a tablet and a microphone plugged into a laptop on a small table next to him and a painkiller being administered into his body intravenously, Bommer opened the newly created software and pretended to be his wife, to show how it worked. . it works.

He asked his AI voicebot if he remembered their first meeting 12 years ago.

“Yes, I remember it very, very well,” replied the voice inside the computer. “We met online and I really wanted to meet you. I had a feeling you would be a great match for me — in the end it was 100% confirmed.”

Bommer is excited about his AI persona and said it will only be a matter of time before the AI ​​voice sounds more human and even more like himself. In the future, he imagines that there will also be an avatar of himself and that one day his family will be able to meet him in a virtual room.

In the case of his wife of 61 years, he doesn’t think it would stop her from dealing with the loss.

“Think about it somewhere in a drawer, if you need it you can take it out, if you don’t need it, just keep it there,” he told her as she sat down next to him on the couch.

But Anett Bommer herself is more hesitant about the new software and whether she will use it after her husband’s death.

Right now, she’s more likely to imagine herself sitting on the couch with a glass of wine, hugging one of her husband’s old sweaters and remembering him, rather than feeling the urge to talk to him through the AI ​​voice robot. – at least not during the first period. mourning.

“But who knows what it will be like when he’s no longer around,” she said, taking her husband’s hand and giving him a look.