AI chatbot tools like ChatGpt are, in a sense, new greeting cards. A set of gentle, wrapped words aimed at inferring complex emotions on behalf of those who cannot or do not write such words themselves.
Both the funeral home and grieving families have recently turned their eyes to AI and written obituaries.
“I…empted my soul at the prompt,” 55-year-old Jeff Fargo told the Washington Post about the rise of AI-generated obituaries. Jeff can turn phrases.
The reason he did it, and why funeral directors now regularly ask their deceased friends and relatives if they want an AI-written obituary, is to offload some of the pain and pressure that they have to remember full words summarizing emotions towards someone else's life.
While it can be argued that pain and pressure is the overall point of it, it is part of the sadness process you ockey by offloading your work to AI, and is equivalent to a set of prettos in Halmark card style prepuccage sets that can be applied to anyone.
AI-created death business is booming
AI startups are flooded with cemeteries. Companies such as Celebrately and AI chatbots are specifically designed to spit out obituaries and Nemu.
It all sounds useful on the surface, but it does have an emotional exploration to it, and it feels like it's removing the human element from something very human. Outsource one of the most emotional acts of writing to the same technique that generated the boss's last email.
On the other hand, it is difficult to discuss the results. Fargo's ChatGpt-generated obituaries resonated with his family, so he is already preparing the AI for his father's inevitable death.
“It's going to be a banger,” Fargo said he's only in the vicinity, but yeah, he's talking about his father's theoretical obituary, just as club DJs talk about upcoming gigs.
You can understand offloading remotely and unpleasant tasks to AI. I can't imagine feeling emotionally and psychologically fulfilled after outsourcing my emotions. They aren't my Emotions. Yes, I have urged them to exist, but the syntax, the language singularity that appears to have been chosen for our own reasons why our memories feel mysterious, what is it? I I feel like I'm losing.
When the news of someone outsources traditionally basic elements of the grief process through my ears, I interpret it as someone trying to escape from the pain rather than doing the difficult tasks that face it.
I recently had to put on an old, sickly dog that meant the world to me. One way I was able to agree with her passing was to place a literal pen on literal paper and physically write my emotions in a notebook. Writing is my profession, but reading previous entries in handwritten obituary journals and failing to erase the brain of editing.
I'm always finding areas where I can catch errors here and there and express myself better. Still, I'm still happy with every word I laid out, every idea I tried to convey. Because the sadness process is messy and the mess that leads to the writing of obituary. I am an active participant in pain and the only real way to overcome it.
I have also fallen victim to an era where I am often obsessed with our convenience. Technology can quickly remove itself from processes that have ruthless efficiency in the name of productivity.
The promotion of the grieving process is natural in its branches. The big technology boom is especially important to touch on big technology, as there is money to reach these nooks.
But they will. Like death itself, it is inevitable.
