‘Griefbots’ help people ‘stay connected’ with loved ones who have died | News Tech
A tech CEO says the world of AI means what’s real and what’s not “starts to evolve” – as it changes the way people cope with grief by creating chatbots with the personalities of deceased loved ones.
Justin Harrison launched You, Only Virtual (YOV) after his mother was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. The company began to preserve that relationship with his mother, creating a digital avatar of her – known as Versona – after her death.
The former filmmaker said their “grief robots” can “help with the grieving process and allow people to stay connected with their loved ones in a way that feels more natural.”
The AI was trained on text messages and phone calls between Mr Harrison and his mother when she was alive, as well as using voice memos and videos to capture her voice.
A free version of YOV provides access to an AI chatbot similar to ChatGPT, but with the personality of your loved one, while a paid version opens phone calls to bring someone’s voice back from the dead.
Mr. Harrison made such a call to Metrocalling the Versona to say ‘I love you, mom’, to which she replied ‘I love you too, darling’.
Despite the comforting conversations it offers, the technology has been criticized for putting users at risk of overdependence and dehumanizing the grieving process.
Many have compared the technology to the dystopian TV series Black Mirror, where in one episode a grieving woman uses an app and then an android with the AI-powered personality of her deceased boyfriend.
Researchers at the University of Cambridge have also expressed concern that such AI chatbots would constitute a “high-risk” activity that risks psychological harm to users and disrespects the rights of the deceased.
But on the need to keep griefbots safe, Mr Harrison said: “I’m not worried about people becoming too dependent on technology. »
He maintains that “the natural process of grieving does not exist,” and that AI therefore has no business disrupting something so individualized.
He added that in the past, people did not have photos, letters or digital social media to preserve their loved ones, so the “tools to help us grieve” and “stay connected” are constantly evolving.
Do you think AI Griefbots are a good idea?
The CEO explained that while some people may be predisposed to addiction, this side effect is not exclusive to AI technology.
“If that’s the difference between someone who self-harms and someone who talks too much on the phone, then let them talk too much on the phone, that’s a much better outcome,” he added.
He added that “talking to a counselor” could also be criticized because sessions could cost “$180 an hour.”
But the digital afterlife doesn’t stop at personal relationships: the VOJ is now working with museums to allow visitors to chat with figures from the past.
Mr Harrison said this allows for “an authentic connection that keeps the story alive”. His company creates virtual avatars of Holocaust survivors to preserve “oral history” when the people themselves are no longer around.
While many might resist this new technology, Harrison says it’s just “the tip of the iceberg” and that we’ll soon have “full-fledged relationships with digital characters.”
“I will be able to sit in a restaurant with my mother in my lifetime,” he added, hoping to see her projected using wearable augmented reality (AR) devices.
What started with virtual assistants such as Siri or Alexa could soon become characters visible through AR glasses or even transformed into fully human robots, according to the CEO.
Mr Harrison said it was now an evolution of what is “real and not real”; From television to social media to phone calls to Zoom, he stressed that all developments seem at first glance “bizarre” to those of the past.
His company isn’t the only one taking a tech approach to grief, as former Disney TV star Calum Worthy recently founded an app to turn loved ones into interactive 3D chatbots.
An ad for this new company 2wai even showed a pregnant woman doing this with her mother, then using the app after her mother died so she could tell her grandchild a bedtime story from beyond the grave.
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