BRINGING THE DEAD BACK TO LIFE

Artificial intelligence is making it possible to interact with lost loved ones – but is it also creating other unforeseen problems? 

- RHODRI MARSDEN

IT’S not something that most people like to dwell on, but we all know it’s going to happen – because death is part of the human condition the loss of a loved one is a cruel inevitability that faces us all.

Even with the great strides in technology we still can’t bring the dead back to life but what tech can do is offer a few soothing sticking plasters by making our recollections of the dead even more vivid by collating our memories, storing them, then serving them back to us as a reminder of what once was.

Some firms are using advances in artificial intelligence (AI) to create authentic representations of those who have left us; perhaps in audio form, perhaps in visual form, perhaps with an interactive element.

For instance, the app HereAfter AI uses a virtual interviewer to prompt users to record themselves talking about their lives. Those recordings are organised to create what it calls a Life Story Avatar, a representation of the user that lives on in digital form and can respond to questions.

Your great-great-grandchildren could, in the future, ask you (or, rather, your avatar) what life was like in the pandemic, what made you laugh, what were your deepest regrets.

Another service, StoryFile, goes a step further by recording recollections on video, allowing your descendants to have some form of face-to-face conversation with you after you’ve gone. Its technology enabled American actor Ed Asner to converse with mourners at his own memorial service.