Can AI Replace Our Loved Ones? Controversial Technology Letting You Talk to the Dead

Wonderland is a science fiction (SF) film about a world where people have voice calls with their family, loved ones, and friends they can no longer meet.

NPR shared the story of a 47-year-old Chinese man, Sun Kai, who has video calls with his mother, who passed away in 2018.

Sun Kai, residing in Nanjing, a port city in eastern China, is a co-founder of the AI startup Silicon Intelligence and an executive member responsible for voice simulation.

Sun Kai created a digital avatar of his deceased mother using technology from his company. Whenever he feels stressed from work, he has video calls with this avatar. He estimates that he talks to her avatar at least once a week. “I do not treat [the avatar] as a kind of digital person. I truly regard it as a mother. I feel that this might be the most perfect person to confide in, without exception,” he explained.

Recreating AI versions of lost loved ones has been an ongoing project. Examples include Microsoft’s virtual conversation simulation, patented in 2017, and Project December, which utilizes OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology.

However, experts have repeatedly warned that such technology could pose ethical dilemmas and emotional damage, leading to the failure of commercial service launches. Microsoft has stated that it has no plans for actual commercial services and that the technology is currently “unstable.” Project December was canceled after OpenAI refused to provide its services to the platform.

Michel Puech, a philosophy professor at Université Paris-Sorbonne, claimed, “What is a good consolation? Can it be religion? Can it be forgetting? No one knows.” He warned, “There is the danger of addiction and [of] replacing real life. So if it works too well, that’s the danger.”

Puech expressed skepticism, stating, “Having too much consoling, too much satisfying experience of a dead person will apparently annihilate the experience, and the grief, of death,” But Puech says that, in fact, it’s largely an illusion.

Silicon Intelligence acknowledges these concerns and has announced plans to formally offer a so-called “resurrection” solution that uses AI to resurrect the deceased.

However, Kai, an executive member of Silicon Intelligence who speaks to his mother’s avatar weekly, said, “Maybe she will always remain as the mother in my memory, rather than a mother who keeps up with the times.” “But people have different ways of dealing with grief,” he added.

Silicon Intelligence offers AI avatars to some of their customers for $150. A client, Yang, who applied for the service, stated, “The ethical issues are minimized because all family members agreed on using the service. Everyone in the family must agree.” He expressed confidence that this service will become popular in China and abroad.