AI technology can blur the boundaries between life and death in our search to ease the burden of grief
Michael Bommer is the latest person to create a digital replica of him likeness which will interact with his family after he has passed away. Bommer, a German startup engineer, has terminal cancer. He collaborated with California-based AI legacy startup Eternos. life, one of the latest platforms in the digital afterlife space, or so I thought. The collaboration made global news and raised ongoing questions about the ethical implications of using big tech to create and manage the afterlife.
According to the website, Eternos creates “digital psychological twins” of individuals who aim to interact with their loved ones after they die. Michael Bommer appears on their website marketing. His digital self is built from his extensive data of writings, recordings, and personal reflections which produce an AI model that can answer questions and offer advice, based on the personality created via data.
The death tech industry is a lucrative business worth $126B. Companies like StoryFile, Replika, and Hereafter AI provide different platforms that service legacy creation and by extension service our grief. What can we expect from Eternos for its $5000 price tag?
I spoke to one of the founders of Eternos.life, Robert LoCascio. Robert was the founder of LivePerson, one of the foundational technologies for AI, web chat. His reason for starting Eternos is a familiar one he shares with other founders in the grief and legacy tech space. His father passed just a few years before generative AI technology could record and replicate his life story. Robert’s idea for Eternos leans towards the idea of creating a legacy before we die to pass on to our relatives. An autobiography created from our texts, photos, videos, and other forms of content.
Depending on how far along you are in your grief or how long ago your loved one died, generative AI grief tech could either cause mental health issues such as prolonged grief or provide comfort with a historical record for your grandchildren. Robert and Eternos are in the latter category. The website doesn’t mention anything about grief, possibly because of the legal and ethical can of worms it can create when making digital afterlife replicas for mental health or grief support. Although Bommer’s story is the first publicity for the Eternos platform, according to Robert the company doesn’t want to get into the grief tech or even post-death legacy space. They will relaunch later this year with some unusual concepts that should differentiate them in a saturated market.
The Eternos website marketing uses the same keywords as AI grief and legacy tech platforms. Words like: Essence, Memories, Legacy, Authenticity, Conversation, Being, Identity, and Interactive Autobiography. What’s new with Eternos is Personal Eternal AI and Share Your Story and Simplify Your Life. What I thought was unique about this latter feature was twofold. Firstly it acknowledges stories about immigration and ancestral resilience. This resonated with me because like most of us, our relatives have come from another land and it is the background of our family story and identity. Ancestral resilience is part of every immigrant story but it’s also about experiencing world events such as the last two world wars. Both my parents had migration and WW2 stories, respectively. Traditionally, these stories were passed down to children and to their children, while recollections changed and stories became myths. While documentaries have recorded personal stories which are forever, historical first-person recollections.
What if, a legacy platform could record your life stories, your travels, who you loved, even your life hacks? Well, Eternos has got that covered. The idea of Simplify Your Life is about documenting what you’ve learned and having access to it throughout your life. So Eternos is for the living, not for those who are at the end of their life. Which is where I got confused from all the publicity surrounding Michael Bommer. Robert tells me that Eternos is not grief tech or death tech, it’s tech for the living. I will need to see their next marketing efforts to fully understand this. As far as the $5000 price tag goes, that will be history. A more affordable SAAS model will be released sometime in the future.
There are genuine ethical concerns about conversing with an AI replica of a deceased loved one. Many deathtech startups are commercially driven and feed off your grief. Anyone who has lost a loved one knows that feeling during bereavement when you would make a deal with the devil to have one more conversation with your parent.
Not all grief tech is bad. The global therapy and mental health chatbot industry is worth USD 1.37 billion and growing. When I’m feeling down and insecure, I chat with Pi, which is a chatbot that provides a form of cognitive behavioral therapy. Therapy can be daunting and expensive, and while a chatbot isn’t there to replace a professional psychologist, it can provide comfort, much in the same way as a legacy chatbot, animated avatar, or conversational AI video.
Grief is individual and how we choose to live with it is our choice. AI grief and legacy tech platforms are just another technological innovation or fad that has been used by man to remember the dead and support the grieving living. Photography is a prime example of this. How you choose to be remembered is up to you. For many of us, being reminded of the death of a loved one is too hard to bear and like those dusty old photographs in the corner of the attic, the chatbots and conversational videos can be switched off, never to be seen or interacted with again.
Ginger Liu is the founder of Hollywood’s Ginger Media & Entertainment, a researcher and journalist in artificial intelligence and visual arts media — specifically grief tech, digital afterlife, AI, death and mourning practices, AI and photography, biometrics, security, and policy, and an author, writer, artist photographer, and filmmaker. Listen to the Podcast — The Digital Afterlife of Grief.
