Talking to the dead. In sixth senseNine-year-old Core Sear “sees people who are dead…” Exchange with them. A superpower that seems to come true. Now, with just a few clicks, the idea is no longer fantasy, or even science fiction. You just need to rely on the right artificial intelligence (AI) tools and you’re good to go.
Tempting promises…
As The Observer reports, in recent years, several companies have launched themselves into technological grievance, understanding the technology sector that is interested in grieving. The goal? Use technology, and more specifically AI, to commemorate, simulate or even resurrect the dead. In total, a dozen startups have jumped into the niche.
The vast majority of them try to create chatbots of deceased people capable of communicating with Internet users. The famous “deadbots” or “ghostbots”. To do this, AI relies on existing information from deceased people to generate new content or imitate it.
This is, for example, the case of Replika AI. In 2016, Eugenia Kuyda created the app to chat with her late best friend. After entering thousands of her messages and tweets into the app, she communicates with her avatar built with the same memories, the same facial expressions, the same dreams as her friend. Then you open your creation to the public… who begin to trust the chatbot. She decides to create Replika. The principle is the same for users: they simply send messages and the AI embodies the deceased.
Along the same lines, Proyecto Diciembre creates text-based chatbots to “simulate deaths.” For its part, Re;memory focuses on video avatars, “a new way to appreciate and remember loved ones.”
…ethically questionable
Other platforms address the (future) deceased directly. In HereAfter, it is possible to haunt your family for generations. Users can upload unlimited voice messages, texts, photos and videos of themselves. In return, an algorithm merges everything to create an avatar of you capable of talking to your loved ones by phone or SMS.
StoryFile works on the same principle, but on video. An interactive video system powered by AI allows you to see your loved one answering questions about their existence. Ask him about his childhood or what the biggest challenge of his life was.
Whatever the platform, they promise all kinds of wonders. Our technology “allows you to recreate conversations with deceased loved ones, thus ensuring a lasting emotional bond,” explains You, Only Virtual, a solution that allows you to create an avatar and chat with it.
“It relieves pain,” he writes on his Re;Memory website. “By allowing you to interact with a realistic digital avatar of your loved one, you will be able to find comfort in expressing your love and forgiveness.”
But behind the marketing slogans, these AIs that raise the dead raise many ethical questions. As of 2021, the National Ethics Advisory Committee (CCNE) analyzed these tools in an opinion on conversational agents. The committee fears that “the human interlocutor may actually have the impression of being in the presence of the person thus imitated, even if he is explicitly informed that it is a machine.”
Delay the grieving process
This is precisely what Julia Velkovska, a sociologist specializing in AI in the human and social sciences department at Orange Research, warns. “In emotionally intense moments like grief, we are vulnerable, we can project ourselves, invest ourselves in the relationship with these systems,” the researcher explains to Le Monde. “But the risk is attributing to them a conscience, intentions, emotions, a capacity for empathy, for understanding, that they do not possess.”
Worse still, according to Laurence Picque, psychotherapist and president of the European federation Living your Mourning, the use of these AIs can make the grieving process more difficult.
Disguised ads
A technology that, therefore, would do more harm than good. With the risk that this emotional vulnerability will be exploited for economic purposes. Because the more attached users become to these virtual interlocutors, the greater the temptation is to pay to maintain this artificial link.
So, exchanging one hundred messages with a bot through Project December costs $10. For its part, You, Only Virtual offers a monthly subscription for $20. For HereAfter, it’s even $199 per month.
For its part, Replika has a consolidated mechanics. To attract potential users, messages are free. At the same time, the company offers paid subscriptions that give access to additional features, such as voice chat, AI-generated selfies, and, for higher subscriptions, the ability to read the bot’s thoughts. The monthly subscription costs around 20 dollars.
And that’s not counting the ads. Because what’s to stop a chatbot from asking a user to buy a wool scarf or order pasta carbonara from a delivery service, like their late mother did?
And then what happens to the dead?
Another concern is that of the consent of the dead. Because if we ask the living for the right to manipulate their personal data, what happens to the dead? Most platforms, with the exception of HereAfter, create virtual companions without asking the opinion of the deceased. Everything from old messages, or even a simple written description.
The CCNE also warned of the risk of not respecting “the dignity of the human person who does not die with death.” Because deadbots, like any generative AI, are sometimes subject to hallucinations and can create or distort the opinion of the missing person. Therefore, the deadbot could reveal or defend political opinions contrary to those of the deceased.
Many researchers are calling for safeguards to be put in place. They propose banning advertising, reducing the presence of these AIs on social networks and prohibiting their access to children. Last recommendation: obtain the consent of Internet users to use their data after their death. One more click and the dead will finally have the right to their general conditions of use.
Source: BFM TV
