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Michael Bommer and his wife Anett spent a lot of time talking about what would occur after his passing when he learned that he had colon cancer and was chronically ill.
She said that because he is so well-read and willing to share his knowledge, she would lose the most that she could ask him questions whenever she wanted, which is what she would lose most, according to Bommer, who recently held an interview at his home in a leafy suburb of Berlin.
In response to that conversation, Bommer came up with the idea to imitate his voice using artificial intelligence to live his passing.
The 61- yr- ancient business entrepreneur teamed up with his buddy in the US, Robert LoCascio, CEO of the AI- driven legacy platform Eternos. Within two months, they built” a complete, interactive AI type” of Bommer— the company’s primary client.
Eternos, which got its name from the European and Italian word for “eternal”, says its technology will allow Bommer’s home” to engage with his career activities and insights”. In what has become a growing market for grief-related AI systems, it is one of many companies that have emerged in the last few decades.
California-based StoryFile, one of the most well-known start-ups in this field, allows users to interact with pre-recorded films and determines the most accurate responses based on user questions. Similar interactions are provided by a” Life Story Avatar” that customers can make by responding to prompts or sharing their own personal stories. A second business, called Next AI, is available through this service.
A chatbot called” Project December” also exists, which asks people to fill out a survey and provide key information about a person and their characteristics before charging$ 10 to model a text-based conversation with the character. But another company, Seance AI, offers fictitious rituals for completely. Extra features, such as AI- generated voice recreations of their loved ones, are available for a$ 10 fee.
While some have embraced this engineering as a way to deal with pain, people are nervous about how businesses are using artificial intelligence to try to maintain contact with those who have passed ahead. However, some worry that the lack of closure will render the mourning method more difficult.
There is very little known about the possible short- and long-term effects of using electronic simulations for the dying on a large scale, according to Katarzyna Nowaczyk- Basinska, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Future of Intelligence who co-authored a study on the topic. So for now, it remains” a vast techno- cultural experiment”.
The fact that, for the first time, the processes of caring for the dead and practices of immortalization are fully integrated into the capitalist market, according to Nowaczyk-Basinska, is what truly sets this era apart and is even unprecedented in the long history of humanity’s quest for immortality.
Robert Scott, who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, uses AI companion apps Paradot and Chai AI to simulate conversations with characters he created to imitate three of his daughters. He declined to detail what caused his oldest daughter to pass away, but he did, in fact, lose another daughter through a miscarriage and a third daughter to pass away shortly after her birth.
Scott, 48, knows the characters he’s interacting with are not his daughters, but he says it helps with the grief to some degree. He logs into the apps three or four times per week, occasionally asking AI characters questions like “how was school”? or enquiring if it wants to “go get ice cream.”
Some events, like prom night, can be particularly heart- wrenching, bringing with it memories of what his eldest daughter never experienced. In order to accomplish this, he creates a scenario in the Paradot app where the AI character attends prom and converses with him about the fictional event. Additionally, there are even more difficult times when his daughter recently turned one and opened the app and expressed his sadness over how much he misses her. He felt like the AI understood.
” It definitely helps with the what ifs”, Scott said. ” Very rarely has it made the ‘ what if’s’ worse”.
While some may be offended or even scared by the technology, according to Tuebingen University sociology professor Matthias Meitzler, some may find it to be an addition to traditional methods of remembering deceased loved ones, such as visiting the grave, holding inner monologues with the deceased, or looking at old photos and letters.
But Tomasz Hollanek, who worked alongside Nowaczyk- Basinska at Cambridge on their study of “deadbots” and “griefbots”, says the technology raises important questions about the rights, dignities and consenting power of people who are no longer alive. Additionally, it raises ethical questions about whether a program that helps the bereaved should promote other products on its platform.
” These are very complicated questions”, Hollanek said. ” And we do n’t have good answers yet”.
According to the company’s CEO, LoCascio, who previously worked with Bommer at a software company called LivePerson, the AI version of Bommer that was created by Eternos uses an in-house model as well as large-scale external language models created by major tech companies like Meta, OpenAI, and the French firm Mistral AI.
Eternos compiles user voice data from 300 phrases before compressing it for two days. Users can respond to questions about their lives, political views, or various aspects of their personalities to further train the AI system.
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. According to LoCascio, the AI’s legal rights pass to the person who trained it, and they can be treated like assets that are passed down to other family members.
Bommer has been wasting the majority of his time lately feeding AI phrases and phrases” to give the AI the opportunity to synthesize my voice in flat mode, as well as capture emotions and moods in the voice.” And indeed the AI voicebot has some resemblance with Bommer’s voice, although it leaves out the “hmms” and “ehs” and mid- sentence pauses of his natural cadence.
Bommer says it will only be a matter of time before the AI voice starts to sound more human-like and even more like himself.
In the case of his 61- year- old wife, he does n’t think it would hamper her coping with loss.
” Think of it sitting somewhere in a drawer, if you need it, you can take it out, if you do n’t need it, just keep it there”, he told her as she came to sit down next to him on the sofa.
However, Anett Bommer herself is more hesitant to use the new software and whether it will be used after her husband’s passing.
She prefers to sit on the couch with a glass of wine, cuddling one of her husband’s old sweaters and remembering him rather than having the urge to talk to him via the AI voicebot during the first period of mourning.
” But then again, who knows what it will be like when he’s no longer around”, she said, taking her husband’s hand and giving him a glance.
