Rod Stewart had several surprising guests at his recent concert in Charlotte, North Carolina. His old friend, Ozzy Osbourne, the lead singer of Black Sabbath, who passed away last month, was clearly shining from some sort of rock haven reunited with other departure stars, including Michael Jackson, Tina Turner and Bob Marley.
The images generated by AI split Stewart's fans. Some accused them as rude and disgusting. Others found the compliments beautiful.
Around the same time, another AI controversy broke out when former CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta interviewed Joaquin Oliver, who was killed at age 17 in a 2018 high school shooting in Florida. Teenager avatars were created by parents. He said it was a blessing to hear him again.
In June, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian posted an animation on X of his late mother hugging him as a child, which he created from the photographs. “Damn, I wasn't ready for how this would feel. We didn't have a video camera so my mother and I don't have a video… This is how she held me. I've rewatched it 50 times,” he wrote.
These are three illustrations of the growing phenomenon of the “digital revival” that use photos, videos, audio messages and other materials to create images and bots of people who have died. There are many companies offering to create “sad bots” or “death bots,” and there are growing questions about the impact on the process of exploitation, privacy and grief.
“It's now very technically possible because large-scale language models such as ChatGpt are now easily accessible to the general public,” said Elaine Kasket, a London-based cybermedicist.
“And these large language models can create something that feels really plausible. When someone dies, they can create something that feels very recognised, such as text, email, voice memos, images, etc., if there is enough digital ruins, they can create something that feels very recognised.”
Just a few years ago, the idea of “virtual immortality” was a techno dream that was futuristic and out of reach of ordinary people. Nowadays, interactive avatars are relatively easy and inexpensive to create, and demand appears to grow.
A 2023 poll commissioned by Christian think tank Theos and conducted by YouGov found that 14% of respondents agreed to feel comfortable interacting with the digital version of their loved ones who have died. The younger the respondents, the more likely they are to be open to the idea of deathbots.
The desire to preserve connections with dead loved ones is nothing new. In the past, families have held valuable personal items that help them get closer to those they have lost. People stare at the photo, watch videos, play audio messages, and listen to music that reminds them of the person. They often dream of the dead or imagine a glimpse of them in the rooms or in the streets. Some may also ask for contact via Seances.
Michael Chorbi, professor of philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and author of Grief, said: “We've created monuments and monuments, preserved hair and reloaded letters. Now, the question is: Is there anything to add to AI?”
The family, Louise Richardson of York University's Department of Philosophy and a collaborator on a four-year project on sadness, said that by visiting graves and touching items that belong to them, they often “may be connected and intimate” with their dead loved ones by “may maintain a sense of connection and closeness” with their dead loved ones.
“Deathbots can serve the same purpose, but they can also destroy the grieving process,” she said. “They can interact with the deathbot in a continuous way, so they can get in the way of recognizing and accommodating what is lost.”
For example, people often wonder what a dead loved one did or said in a particular situation. “Now I feel like you can ask them.”
But deathbots may offer a “subtted, rosy” representation of a person, Chorbi said. For example, those creating a deathbot for a deceased grandma may choose not to include her casual racism or other unattractive aspects of her personality in the material provided to the AI generator.
Also, AI author Nathan Mladin and The Afterlife author Nathan Mladin said the Theos report was published last year. “Digital necromancy is a deceptive experience. I think you're talking to people when you're actually talking to a machine.
The Digital Clone of the Dead boom began in the Far East. In China, creating a digital avatar for your loved one costs just 20 yuan (£2.20); one estimate shows that the market was worth 12 billion yuan (£1.2 billion) in 2022, and was expected to quadruple by 2025.
A more sophisticated interactive avatar that moves and talks with clients can cost thousands of pounds. The leading funeral operator, Fu Shou Yuan International Group, says that “the dead can “revive” in a virtual world.” According to the Chinese Funeral Association, the cost is approximately 50,000 yuan per person who dies.
Cholbi said that exploitation of grief for private benefits is a risk, but pointed to a long history of false sales and upselling in the funeral business.
Kasket said another pitfall is privacy and rights to digital ruins. “The dead have no opportunity, no response or control to agree,” she added, the unauthorized use of digital materials to create persuasive avatars for financial gain is another concern.
Some people are beginning to define in their will not want to use digital materials after their death.
Interactive avatars are not just for the dead. Abba Voyage is a show featuring digital versions of four members of the Swedish pop group performing in its heyday, earning around £1.6 million each week. The audience thrilled to the exhilarating experience and sang together, as members of the band, now 75 to 80, rose to their feet home.
Even more calmly, the UK's National Holocaust Centre and Museum launched a project in 2016 to create interactive avatars that can capture voices and images of Holocaust survivors and answer questions about their experiences at the Nazi death camp in the future.
According to Cholbi, there is an element of “Ai Hype” around Deathbots. “I don't doubt that some people are interested in this. I think there are some interesting therapeutic applications. It could be something people carry around regularly.
“But I suspect people will try to maintain relationships with the dead for a very long time through this technology.
“This isn't to say that some people might really jump into this, but it seems like a case where the prospects may not be as promising as some commercial investors might want.”
For Murazin, the deathbot industry raises great questions for ethicists and theologians. He said that his interest in a digital revival “may be the result of the decline of traditional religious beliefs, but life after death, the permanence of love is directed towards technological solutions, and thus a deeper longing for transcendence.”
“This is an expression of peak modernity, a belief that technology conquer death and gives us eternity. It is a symptom of the kind of culture we live in now.”
Kasket said: “In my mind, I have no doubt that I will create these kinds of phenomena and use them in ways that I find useful.
“When we lose the ability to deal with grief, or convince ourselves that we can't deal with it, we become truly psychologically fragile. It's not a pathology or illness, it's not a matter of technology. Grief and loss are part of the normal human experience.”
