At a quiet cemetery in eastern China, bereaved father Seakoo Wu pulls out his phone, places it on a gravestone and plays a recording of his son.
They are words that the late student never spoke, but
brought into being with artificial intelligence.
“I know you’re in great pain every day because of me, and
feel guilty and helpless,” intones Xuanmo in a slightly robotic voice.
“Even though I can’t be by your side ever again, my soul is
still in this world, accompanying you through life.”
Stricken by grief, Wu and his wife have joined a growing
number of Chinese people turning to AI technology to create lifelike avatars of
their departed.
Ultimately Wu wants to build a fully realistic replica that
behaves just like his dead son but dwells in virtual reality.
“Once we synchronise reality and the metaverse, I’ll have my
son with me again,” Wu said.
“I can train him… so that when he sees me, he knows I’m his
father.”
Some Chinese firms claim to have created thousands of
“digital people” from as little as 30 seconds of audiovisual material of the
deceased.
Experts say they can offer much-needed comfort for people
devastated by the loss of loved ones.
But they also evoke an unsettling theme from the British
sci-fi series “Black Mirror” in which people rely on advanced AI for
bereavement support.
‘Needs are growing’
Wu and his wife were devastated when Xuanmo, their only
child, died last year at the age of 22 while attending Exeter University in
Britain.
The accounting and finance student, keen sportsman and
posthumous organ donor “had such a rich and varied life”, said Wu.
“He always carried in him this desire to help people and a
sense of right and wrong,” he told AFP.
Following a boom in deep learning technologies like ChatGPT
in China, Wu began researching ways to resurrect him.
He gathered photos, videos and audio recordings of his son,
and spent thousands of dollars hiring AI firms that cloned Xuanmo’s face and
voice.
The results so far are rudimentary, but he has also set up a
work team to create a database containing vast amounts of information on his
son.
Wu hopes to feed it into powerful algorithms to create an
avatar capable of copying his son’s thinking and speech patterns with extreme
precision.
Several companies specialising in so-called “ghost bots”
have emerged in the United States in recent years.
But the industry is booming in China, according to Zhang
Zewei, the founder of the AI firm Super Brain and a former collaborator with
Wu.
“On AI technology, China is in the highest class worldwide,”
said Zhang from a workspace in the eastern city of Jingjiang.
“And there are so many people in China, many with emotional
needs, which gives us an advantage when it comes to market demand.”
Super Brain charges between 10,000 and 20,000 yuan
($1,400-$2,800) to create a basic avatar within about 20 days, said Zhang.
They range from those who have died to living parents unable
to spend time with their children and — controversially — a heartbroken woman’s
ex-boyfriend.
Clients can even hold video calls with a staff member whose
face and voice are digitally overlaid with those of the person they have lost.
“The significance for… the whole world is huge,” Zhang said.
“A digital version of someone (can) exist forever, even
after their body has been lost.”
‘New humanism’
Sima Huapeng, who founded Nanjing-based Silicon
Intelligence, said the technology would “bring about a new kind of humanism”.
He likened it to portraiture and photography, which helped
people commemorate the dead in revolutionary ways.
Tal Morse, a visiting research fellow at the Centre for
Death and Society at Britain’s University of Bath, said ghost bots may offer
comfort.
But he cautioned that more research was needed to understand
their psychological and ethical implications.
“A key question here is… how ‘loyal’ are the ghost bots to
the personality they were designed to mimic,” Morse told AFP.
“What happens if they do things that will ‘contaminate’ the
memory of the person they are supposed to represent?”
Another quandary arises from the inability of dead people to
consent, experts said.
While permission was probably unnecessary to mimic speech or
behaviour, it might be needed to “do certain other things with that
simulacrum”, said Nate Sharadin, a philosopher at the University of Hong Kong
specialising in AI and its social effects.
For Super Brain’s Zhang, all new technology is “a
double-edged sword”.
“As long as we’re helping those who need it, I see no
problem”.
He doesn’t work with those for whom it could have negative
impacts, he said, citing a woman who had attempted suicide after her daughter’s
death.
Bereaved father Wu said Xuanmo would “probably would have
been willing” to be digitally revived.
“One day, son, we will all reunite in the metaverse,” he
said as his wife dissolved into tears before his grave.
“The technology is getting better every day… it’s just a
matter of time.”
AFP
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