SEOUL, South Korea — Wanting to give a gift to her father, who sacrificed so much to raise her as a single parent, Lee Kun-hee settled on an unusual idea. It was an AI-animated video message from his late grandfather, who missed his father very much.
Lee wrote the message and in December asked Seoul-based technology company Vice to create a short digital video clip of his grandfather delivering the message. The virtual character called his father “my most precious son” and apologized for letting him help with farm work when he was young and for opposing his son’s decision to become a hairdresser.
“My father said he wouldn’t watch the video, but he did, and he cried. So I felt rewarded,” Lee, a 28-year-old office worker, said in a recent interview. “I wrote the script…because that’s what I actually wanted to tell my dad.”
A growing number of digitally savvy South Koreans are experimenting with artificial intelligence’s ability to create video reenactments of the dead. Many startups are offering videos featuring AI-created recreations of loved ones, and TV shows are featuring AI versions of deceased pop stars and actors.
This emerging industry is causing both excitement and anxiety. While some say the practice has a comforting effect on grieving people, others say it raises thorny ethical, psychological and legal questions.
“This is a double-edged sword because it deals with human emotions,” said Yongman Ro, an AI expert at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. “As AI technology becomes more part of people’s lives, it may also bring cultural experiences and shocks that we have never experienced before.”
Vaice CEO Jeongu Won said his company serves about 300 customers each month, mostly people in their 40s or 50s who want videos of their deceased parents. Some people request videos of their deceased grandparents as gifts for their parents.
Wong said his company needs several photos of the deceased and a short audio sample to create the caricature. A basic three- to five-minute video costs $390, he said.
Won said many customers play these AI videos during family gatherings for memorial services for loved ones or major Korean holidays, adding that customers typically write scripts. Wong said most customers add the words “I love you,” and some express regret over unresolved conflicts with their deceased parents and a desire to overcome them.
Lee’s grandfather died suddenly in a traffic accident before he was born, and Lee said she felt regret that she couldn’t show him that her father was doing well as a hairdresser and that she had a son.
“I don’t know much about my grandfather, but when I saw the tears on my father’s face, I got a little emotional because I thought that my father still missed him,” Lee said.
Concerns about ethical issues
According to Choi Yu-ha, an executive at the company, when JL Standard launched a similar service five years ago, some bereaved customers voiced suspicions because they were concerned that it would expose the bereaved family’s grief. However, thanks in part to the appearance of deceased celebrities on TV, acceptance of AI grief technology is growing.
Wong says he has yet to hear from any customers who have become unbearable because of his products.
But observers warn that imitating the dead raises ethical questions and that blurring the lines between reality and the virtual world could put some vulnerable people at risk.
Chung-wan, a professor emeritus at Seoul’s Kyung Hee University Law School, said laws are urgently needed to protect the dignity and other rights of the deceased. He said the creation of AI-generated versions of the dead should be prohibited if the deceased objected during their lifetime, and there should be clear limits on the commercial use of images and voices of the deceased.
Experts say ethical issues could become even more difficult to manage as they look to the potential for “griefbots” or “deathbots” that simulate two-way conversations between bereaved families and AI versions of their deceased loved ones. Startups are already experimenting with such products.
“Psychologically, healthy mourning requires a process of acknowledging the absence of the deceased and working through the pain of loss,” Choung said. “However, interacting with an AI system that simulates a living person can have the negative effect of impairing the process of coming to terms with death, and instead trapping the bereaved in an illusion.”
Wong said he was cautious about launching an AI chatbot service because real-time conversations with people cannot be monitored by company officials and could raise unforeseen ethical issues.
Still, technology and its acceptance are moving rapidly.
Choi said advances in technology have made it possible to recreate dead people’s wrinkles and pores in amazing detail, and customers are now saying that the AI caricatures of their loved ones really look like them.
Low said conversational chatbots have technical hurdles to overcome, such as a mismatch between verbal comments and facial expressions. Also, the longer the conversation, the less human it tends to be.
“Some people wonder why they can talk to a chatbot for five minutes, but not for an hour. Efforts are underway to develop technology that will allow for an hour-long conversation,” Lo said.
After her parents passed away last year, Lo said she created a one-minute video using AI with their caricatures and played it at a gathering with her siblings. The family members said they were all moved when they saw their parents telling them, “Don’t worry” and “Take care,” in the digital version.
But Lo said he and his brother never saw the movie again. “One look was enough to honor my late parents, who were quite old, and we moved on,” he said.
