MIND OF MY OWN

The Woman's Own columnist has her say on Al, apologising and understanding men

- 

THE DIGITAL RESURRECTION

Would you use AI to bring deceased loved ones back to life?

This month, it's been 28 years since I lost my dad. One minute he was healthy, five months later gone at just age 64.

Mum and I sat and held his hand as he went and there isn't a day that goes by when I don't think about him. What he'd think about what his 'girls' - Mum, Sis, me and now his gorgeous granddaughter were making of their lives. He missed his granddaughter Paige's birth by five months. Early next year, there will be an empty seat for him at her wedding.

Time doesn't heal pain - it simply lessens it.

I still can't have photos of Dad - his name was Bobby, by the way - around the house. Sis, on the other hand, has loads. We all grieve in different ways.

But could either of us use AI to bring Dad back? To ask modern technology to create a moving, talking image of him, maybe even attending Paige's forthcoming wedding in the videos and pictures?

It makes me feel tearful even thinking about it, but for a growing number of people this is a way they cope with their grief of losing a loved one, especially a child.

Over the past five years, the technology powering AI models has r provided a new host of features related to the grieving process - from chatbots that mimic the personality of the deceased through text to more sophisticated technologies offering interactive video conversations.

In a recent case, a grieving mum who lost her non-verbal, disabled daughter as a three-year-old. She asked AI to generate the little girl as she’d look as a fully abled, verbal six-year-old on the third anniversary of the child’s death.