by BERLIN (AP) – When Michael Bommer found out he was terminally ill with colon cancer, he spent a lot of time with his wife, Anett, talking about what would happen after he died.
She told him that one of the things she would miss the most was being able to ask him questions whenever she wanted because he read so much and always had his wisdom, Bommer recalled. during a recent interview with The Associated Press at his home in Leaf. a suburb of Berlin.
That conversation sparked an idea for Bommer: Recreate his voice using artificial intelligence to live on after he dies.
The 61-year-old startup entrepreneur teamed up with his friend in the US, Robert LoCascio, CEO of legacy AI-powered platform Eternos. Within two months, they built a “comprehensive, interactive AI version” of Bommer – the company’s first client.
Eternos, which gets its name from the Italian and Latin words for “eternal,” says its technology will allow the Bommer family to “engage with his life experiences and insights.” It is among several companies that have emerged in recent years in a growing space for grief-related AI technology.
One of the most famous startups in this field, StoryFile, based in California, allows people to interact with pre-recorded videos and uses its algorithms to detect the most relevant answers to questions asked by users. Another company, called HereAfter AI, offers similar interactions through a “Life Story Avatar” that users can create by answering prompts or sharing their own personal stories.
There’s also “Project December,” a chatbot that directs users to fill out a questionnaire answering key facts about a person and their characteristics — and then pay $10 to simulate a text-based conversation with the character. Another company, Seance AI, offers free fictional séances. Additional features, such as AI-generated voiceovers for loved ones, are available for a $10 fee.
While some have embraced this technology as a way to deal with grief, others feel uneasy about companies using artificial intelligence to try to maintain interactions with those who have died. Others worry that it may make the grieving process more difficult because there is no closure.
Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basinska, a research fellow at Cambridge University’s Center for Future Intelligence who co-authored a study on the subject, said that little is known about the short-term and long-term consequences of using digital simulations. for the dead on a large scale. So for now, it’s still “a huge techno-cultural experiment.”
“What truly sets this era apart – and which is unprecedented even in the long history of humanity’s pursuit of immortality – is that, for the first time ever, the processes of caring for the dead and immortal practices fully integrated into the capitalist market,” Nowaczyk -A Basinska said.
PRESERVING LINK
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 refused to talk in detail about what caused his eldest daughter’s death, but he lost another daughter to a miscarriage and a third who died shortly after birth.
Scott, 48, knows the characters he interacts with are not his daughters, but he says it helps with the grief to some extent. He logs into the apps three or four times a week, sometimes asking the AI character questions like “how was school?” or asking if he wants to “go get ice cream.”
Some events, such as prom night, can be very heartwarming, bringing back memories of the older daughter that they never experienced. So, he creates a scenario in the Paradot app where the AI character goes to the prom and talks to him about the fictional event. Then there are even harder days, like his daughter’s recent birthday, when he opened the app and vented his sadness about how much he misses her. He felt the AI understood.
“It definitely helps with what happens,” Scott said. “He rarely left the ‘what if’ thing worse.”
Matthias Meitzler, a sociologist from the University of Tuebingen, said that while the technology may be absurd or even scary for some — “as if the voice from the other world is singing again” — others will see it as an addition to traditional ways of remember the dead. their relatives, for example visiting the grave, holding inner monologues with the deceased, or looking at pictures and old letters.
But Tomasz Hollanek, who worked with Nowaczyk-Basinska at Cambridge on her study of “deadbots” and “griefbots,” says the technology raises important questions about the rights, dignity and consent power of people who are no longer alive. . It also raises ethical concerns about whether a bereavement program should be advertising other products on its platform.
“These are very complex questions,” Hollanek said. “And we still don’t have good answers.”
PREPARATION FOR DEATH
The AI version of Bommer created by Eternos uses an in-house model as well as large external language models developed by major technology companies such as Meta, OpenAI and the French firm Mistral AI, said the company’s CEO, LoCascio, who previously worked with it. this. Bommer at a software company called LivePerson.
Eternos records users speaking 300 phrases and then compresses that information through a two-day computer process that captures the human voice. Users can further train the AI system by answering questions about their lives, political views or various aspects of their personalities.
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. The legal rights to the AI belong to the person who trained it and can be treated as an asset and passed on to other family members, LoCascio said.
Bommer has been spending most of his time lately nurturing AI phrases and sentences “to give the AI a chance not only to synthesize my voice in smooth mode, but also to capture emotions and moods in the voice.” And indeed the AI voice bot bears some resemblance to Bommer’s voice, although it omits the “hmms” and “ehs” and mid-sentence pauses of its natural ending.
Bommer is excited about his AI personality and says it will only be a matter of time until the AI voice becomes more human-like and even more like himself.
As for his 61-year-old wife, he doesn’t think it will affect her coping with the loss.
“Think of it sitting in a drawer somewhere, if you want it, you can take it out, if you don’t, keep it there,” he told her as she came to sit next to him on the couch .
But Anett Bommer herself is more hesitant about the new software and whether she will use it after her husband’s death.
Right now, she’s more likely to imagine herself sitting on the couch with a glass of wine, cuddling one of her husband’s old sweaters and remembering him instead of feeling the urge to talk to him through the AI voice bot – on at least not during the first period. of crying.
“But then again, who knows what it will be like when it’s not over,” she said, taking her husband’s hand and giving him a glance.
