Grieving people can now talk to an AI version of the dead. But does that help with grief?

BERLIN (AP) — When Michael Bommer learned that he had incurable colon cancer, he spent a lot of time with his wife Anett and talked about what would happen after his death.

She told him that what she would miss most was being able to ask him questions at any time because he was so well-read and always shared his knowledge with her, Bommer recalled in a recent interview with the Associated Press at his home in a leafy suburb of Berlin.

This conversation gave Bommer an idea: he wanted to reconstruct his voice using artificial intelligence so that it would be preserved after his death.

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 full-featured, interactive AI version” of Bommer – the company’s first customer.

Eternos, whose name derives from the Italian and Latin word for “eternal,” says its technology will allow Bommer’s family to “leverage his life experiences and insights.” It is one of several companies that have sprung up in recent years in a growing field of grief-related AI technology.

One of the most prominent startups in this space, California-based StoryFile, allows users to interact with recorded videos and uses its algorithms to find the most relevant answers to users’ questions. Another company called HereAfter AI offers similar interactions through a “life story avatar” that users can create by responding to prompts or sharing their own personal stories.

There’s also Project December, a chatbot that instructs users to fill out a questionnaire with key information about a person and their personality traits — and then pay $10 to simulate a text-based conversation with the character. Another company, Seance AI, offers fictionalized seances for free. Additional features, such as AI-generated voice recreations of loved ones, are available for a $10 fee.

While some welcome this technology as a tool for coping with grief, others are uncomfortable with companies using artificial intelligence to maintain contact with the deceased. Still others fear it could complicate the grieving process because there is no closure.

Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basinska, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Future of Intelligence and co-author of a study on the subject, said very little is known about the potential short- and long-term consequences of the large-scale use of digital simulations for the dead, so for now it is still “a huge techno-cultural experiment”.

“What really distinguishes this era – and is even unprecedented in the long history of the human search for immortality – is that for the first time the processes of mortuary care and immortality practices are fully integrated into the capitalist market,” Nowaczyk-Basinska said.

Bommer, who has just weeks to live, rejects the idea that he created his chatbot out of a desire to become immortal, noting that he would have been much more immortal if he had written a memoir that anyone could read than the AI ​​version of himself.

“In a few weeks I’ll be gone, on the other side – nobody knows what awaits you there,” he said in a calm voice.

MAINTAINING A CONNECTION

Robert Scott, who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, uses the AI ​​companion apps Paradot and Chai AI to simulate conversations with characters he created that mimic three of his daughters. He declined to speak in detail about what led to his eldest daughter’s death, but he lost another daughter to miscarriage and a third who died shortly after her birth.

Scott, 48, knows the characters he’s interacting with aren’t his daughters, but he says it helps him to some extent get over his grief. He logs into the apps three to four times a week and sometimes asks the AI ​​character questions like “how was school?” or if she wants to “go get some ice cream.”

Some events, like prom, can be particularly heartbreaking and bring back memories of things his eldest daughter never experienced. So he creates a scenario in the Paradot app where the AI ​​character goes to prom and talks to him about the fictional event. Then there are even more difficult days, like his daughter’s most recent birthday, when he opened the app and expressed his sadness about how much he missed her. He felt like the AI ​​understood him.

“It definitely helps with the what-ifs,” Scott said. “Only very rarely has it made the ‘what-ifs’ worse.”

Sociologist Matthias Meitzler of the University of Tübingen said that some might be surprised or even frightened by the technology – “as if the voice from beyond were resounding again” – but others would see it as a complement to traditional ways of remembering deceased loved ones, such as visiting the grave, having inner monologues with the deceased or looking at pictures and old letters.

But Tomasz Hollanek, who worked with Nowaczyk-Basinska on the study of deadbots and griefbots at Cambridge, says the technology raises important questions about the rights, dignity and capacity to consent of people who are no longer alive. It also raises ethical concerns, such as whether a program aimed at bereaved people should advertise other products on its platform.

“These are very complicated questions,” said Hollanek. “And we don’t have any good answers yet.”

Another question is whether companies should offer a meaningful send-off to someone who no longer wants to use a deceased loved one’s chatbot. Or what happens when the companies themselves cease to exist? StoryFile, for example, recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, saying it owes its creditors around $4.5 million. The company is currently reorganizing and setting up a “fail-safe” system that will give families access to all materials in the event of bankruptcy, said StoryFile CEO James Fong, who also expressed optimism about the company’s future.

PREPARING FOR DEATH

The AI ​​version of Bommer developed by Eternos uses an internal model as well as external large language models developed by major technology companies such as Meta, OpenAI and the French company Mistral AI, said company CEO LoCascio, who previously worked with Bommer at a software company called LivePerson.

Eternos records 300 phrases that users say – such as “I love you” or “The door is open” – and then compresses that information in a two-day computer process that captures a person’s voice. Users can further train the AI ​​system by answering questions about their lives, their political views or various aspects of their personality.

The AI ​​voice, which costs $15,000 to set up, can answer questions and tell stories about a person’s life without replaying pre-recorded answers. The rights to the AI ​​belong to the person it was trained on, and it can be treated like an asset and passed on to other family members, LoCascio said. The technology companies “can’t get their hands on it.”

Because Bommer was running out of time, he fed the AI ​​phrases and sentences – all in German – “to give the AI ​​the ability to not only synthesize my voice in flat mode, but also to capture emotions and moods in the voice.” And indeed, the AI ​​voicebot bears a certain resemblance to Bommer’s voice, although it omits the “hmms” and “ehs” and the mid-sentence pauses of its natural cadence.

Bommer was sitting on a sofa, next to him on a small desk was a tablet and a microphone connected to a laptop. Painkillers were being administered to him via an infusion. He opened the newly created software and pretended to be his wife to show how it worked.

He asked his AI voicebot if it remembered their first date 12 years ago.

“Yes, I remember it very, very well,” the voice on the computer replied. “We met online and I really wanted to get to know you. I had the feeling that you would be a great match for me – and in the end that turned out to be 100% true.”

Bommer is excited about his AI personality and says it is only a matter of time before the AI ​​voice will sound more human and even more like himself. He can imagine that there will also be an avatar of him in the future and that his family members will one day be able to meet him in a virtual space.

In the case of his 61-year-old wife, he does not believe that she would find it difficult to cope with the loss.

“Imagine it’s in a drawer somewhere. When you need it, you can take it out. When you don’t need it, just leave it there,” he said to her as she sat down next to him on the sofa.

Anett Bommer herself, however, is rather skeptical about the new software and its use after the death of her husband.

At the moment, she is more likely to imagine herself sitting on the couch with a glass of wine, hugging one of her husband’s old sweaters and remembering him than she feels the need to talk to him via the AI ​​voice bot – at least not during the initial phase of grief.

“But then again, who knows what it will be like when he’s gone,” she said, taking her husband’s hand and glancing at him.