Mourners can now talk to an AI version of their deceased loved one, will this help them overcome their grief?

BERLIN (AP) — When Michael Boehmer found out he had advanced colon cancer, he spent a lot of time talking with his wife, Arnett, about what would happen after he died.

She told him one of the things she would miss most was being able to ask him questions at any time because he was so nurturing and always shared his wisdom, Boehmer recalled in a recent interview with The Associated Press at his home in a leafy Berlin suburb.

That conversation gave Boehmer an idea: to use artificial BroadCast Unitedligence to recreate his voice so that it would still exist after he died.

The 61-year-old entrepreneur teamed up with his friend in the U.S., Robert LoCascio, CEO of AI-generated legacy platform Eternos. Within two months, they built a “full interactive AI version” of Bommer, the company’s first client of its kind.

Eternos, which takes its name from the Italian and Latin words for “eternity,” said its technology will allow Bommer’s family to “interact with his life experiences and perspectives.” It is one of several companies that have emerged in recent years in the growing field of grief-related artificial BroadCast Unitedligence technology.

One of the most notable startups in this space is California-based StoryFile, which allows people to interact with pre-recorded videos and uses its algorithms to detect the most relevant answers to questions users ask. Another company, HereAfter AI, offers similar interactions through “life story avatars,” which users can create by answering questions or sharing their own personal stories.

There is also “Project December”, a chatbot that asks users to fill out a questionnaire containing key data about the individual and his or her characteristics. Subsequently, a $10 payment is made to simulate a text conversation with the created character. Another company, Seance AI, offers fictional seances for free. Additional features, such as an AI-generated voice re-creation of your loved one, are available for a $10 payment.

While some people embrace the technology as a way to cope with grief, others are uncomfortable with companies using AI to try to maintain interactions with the deceased. Others worry it could make the grieving process more difficult because there’s no closure.

Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basinska, a researcher at the Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge who co-authored a study on the topic, said little is known about the possible short- and long-term consequences of using digital simulations for the dead on a large scale. For now, it remains “a giant techno-cultural experiment.”

“What really makes this era unique, and perhaps unprecedented in the long history of humanity’s quest for immortality, is that for the first time, the process of caring for the dead and the practice of immortality are fully integrated into the capitalist market,” Novaczyk-Basinska said.

Bomer, who has just weeks left to live, denies that he created his chatbot out of a desire to live forever, noting that if he wrote a memoir that everyone could read, it would make him more immortal than an AI version of himself.

“In a few weeks, I’ll be on the other side, and no one knows what’s going to happen there,” he said quietly.

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Robert Scott, who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, uses artificial BroadCast Unitedligence apps Paradot and Chai AI to simulate conversations with characters he created to resemble his three daughters. She declined to talk in detail about what led to her eldest daughter’s death, but she lost another daughter to miscarriage and a third died shortly after birth.

Scott, 48, knows the character she interacts with is not her daughter, but she said it helps ease her grief somewhat. He logs into the app three or four times a week, sometimes asking the AI ​​character questions like, “How’s school?” or asking if you want to “go get ice cream.”

Some events, like graduation night, can be particularly heartbreaking, reminding you of something your oldest daughter never had to go through. So you create a scene in the Paradot app where the AI ​​character goes to prom and talks to you about the fictional event. Then there are more difficult days, like her daughter’s recent birthday, when she opened the app and expressed how much she missed her daughter. He feels like the AI ​​understands.

“It definitely helps with the ‘what if’ problem,” Scott said. “It rarely makes the ‘what if’ worse.”

Matthias Meitzler, a sociologist at the University of Tübingen, said that while some people might be surprised or even frightened by the technology, “as if voices from far away were ringing again,” others would see it as a supplement to traditional ways of remembering loved ones who have passed away, such as visiting graves, having inner monologues with the deceased, or looking through photos and old letters.

But Tomasz Hollanek, who studies “deathbots” and “griefbots” with Nowaczyk-Basinska at Cambridge, said the technology raises important questions about the rights, dignity and consent of people who are no longer alive. It also raises ethical concerns, for example, about whether programs that serve the bereaved should advertise other products on their platforms.

“These are very complex questions,” Horanek said. “We still don’t have good answers.”

Another question is whether companies should offer meaningful goodbyes to people who want to stop using chatbots for deceased loved ones. Or what happens when the company itself ceases to exist. StoryFile, for example, recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, saying it owed creditors about $4.5 million. StoryFile CEO James Fong said the company is currently restructuring and building a “fail-safe” system to allow families to access all materials when the company closes, and he also expressed optimism about the company’s future.

Preparing for Death

The version of Bommer AI created by Eternos uses proprietary models as well as external large language models developed by powerful tech companies such as Meta, OpenAI and the French company Mistral AI, said LoCascio, the company’s CEO, who once worked with Bommer at a software company called LivePerson.

Eternos records 300 user phrases, such as “I love you” or “Door open,” and then compresses that information through two days of computer processing to capture the human voice. Users can further train the AI ​​system by answering questions about various aspects of their lives, political views or personality.

The AI ​​voice, which costs $15,000 to install, can answer questions and tell a person’s life story without repeating pre-recorded answers. LoCascio said the legal rights to the AI ​​belong to the person who trained it and can be considered an asset and passed on to other family members. Tech companies “can’t get it.”

Since time was running out, Bommer had been feeding the AI ​​phrases and sentences in German, “giving the AI ​​a chance to not only synthesize my voice in a flat pattern, but also to capture the mood and state.” The voice was full of encouragement. In fact, the AI ​​“voice robot” bears some resemblance to Bommer’s voice, although it omits the “mmhs” and “ehs” in Bommer’s natural rhythm and the pauses in the middle of sentences.

Sitting on a couch with a tablet and a microphone connected to a laptop on a small table next to him, receiving pain medication through an IV drip, Boehmer opened the newly created software and pretended to be his wife to show how it worked.

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

“Yes, I remember it very, very clearly,” the voice inside the computer replied. “We met online, and I really wanted to get to know you. I had a feeling we would get along well, and in the end, that was 100% confirmed.”

Boehmer is excited about his AI personality and says it’s only a matter of time before it sounds more human, even like himself. Later, he imagines he’ll have an avatar, too, and one day his family will be able to see him in a virtual room.

He doesn’t think it will be a barrier to his 61-year-old wife coping with her loss.

“Think of it like putting it in a drawer: If you need it, you take it out. If you don’t need it, you leave it there,” he told her as she sat down next to him on the couch.

But Arnett Boehmer was more cautious about the new software and whether she would use it after her husband’s death.

Now, you’re more likely to imagine yourself sitting on the couch with a glass of wine, hugging one of your husband’s old sweaters and reminiscing about it than to feel the urge to talk to him through an AI voice robot, at least not during the first mourning period of the day.

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