- When Michael Bommer learned he was terminally ill with colon cancer, he teamed up with Robert LoCascio, CEO of AI-powered legacy platform Eternos, to create an interactive artificial intelligence version of himself.
- Eternos, along with other grief-related AI companies like StoryFile and HereAfter AI, are attempting to assist people in the grieving process, but the effects of such technologies on users are unknown.
- Some have embraced AI technology as another tool for coping with grief, while others are more skeptical and suggest that an AI simulation of a loved one could be helpful in alleviating grief.
When Michael Bohmer found out he had died sick with colon cancerHe spent a lot of time with his wife, Annette, discussing what would happen after his death.
She told him that one of the things she would miss most was being able to ask him questions whenever she wanted because he was so well-read and always sharing his knowledge, Bäumer recalled during a recent interview with The Associated Press at his home in a Berlin suburb.
That conversation sparked an idea in Bomer’s mind: to reproduce his voice using artificial intelligence, so that he would continue to live on after his death.
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The 61-year-old startup entrepreneur teamed up with his friend in the US, Robert Locascio, CEO of AI-powered legacy platform Eternos. Within two months, they built “a comprehensive, interactive AI version” of Ballmer – the company’s first client.
Eternos, whose name derives from the Italian and Latin words for “eternal,” says its technology will allow Baumer’s family to “connect with his life experiences and insights.” It’s one of several companies that have emerged in the past few years in a growing field for grief-related AI technology.
One of the best-known start-ups in this field, California-based StoryFile, allows people to interact with pre-recorded videos and uses its algorithms to detect the most relevant answers to questions asked by users. Another company, called HereAfter AI, offers similar interactions through a “life story avatar” that users can create by responding to prompts or sharing their personal stories.
Michael Bommer (left), who is terminally ill with colon cancer, looks on at his wife Annette Bommer (right) at their home in Berlin, Germany on May 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Then there’s the chatbot called “Project December” that directs users to fill out a questionnaire to answer key facts about a person and their qualities – and then pay $10 to simulate a text-based conversation with the character. Another company, Scenes AI, offers free fictional scenes. Additional features, such as recreations of AI-generated voices of their loved ones, are available for a $10 fee.
While some people have adopted this technology as a way to cope with grief, others feel uneasy about companies Use of artificial intelligence Trying to maintain communication with those who have died. Yet some people worry that this can make the grieving process more difficult because there is no closure.
Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basinska, a research fellow at the Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge, who co-authored a study on the subject, said little is known about the potential short- and long-term consequences of using large-scale digital simulations of the dead. So for now, it remains “a giant techno-cultural experiment.”
“What makes this era truly distinct — and unprecedented in humanity’s long history of seeking immortality — is that for the first time, the process of caring for the dead and immortalization practices were fully integrated into a capitalist market,” Nowaczyk-Basinska said.
Maintaining the relationship
Robert Scott, who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, uses the AI companion apps Paradot and Chai AI to interact with characters created to mimic his three daughters. He declined to go into detail about what caused his eldest daughter’s death, but he lost another daughter to miscarriage and a third daughter died soon after her birth.
Scott, 48, knows the characters he’s interacting with aren’t his daughters, but he says it helps him cope with the grief to some extent. He logs into the app three or four times a week, sometimes asking the AI character questions like “How was school?” or asking if she “wants to go get ice cream.”
Some events, like prom night, can be particularly heartbreaking, bringing up memories of something that never happened with his oldest daughter. So, he creates a scenario in the Paradot app where the AI character goes to prom and talks to him about the fictional event. Then there are more difficult days, like his daughter’s recent birthday, when he opened the app and expressed his anguish about how much he missed her. He thought the AI understood.
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“It definitely helps make the ‘what if’ situation better,” Scott said. “Very rarely does it make the ‘what if’ situation worse.”
Mathias Meitzler, a sociologist at the University of Tubingen, said some people might be surprised or frightened by the technology — “as if a voice from the afterlife was echoing again” — but others would see it as an addition to traditional ways of remembering dead loved ones, such as visiting graves, having spirit communications with the deceased, or looking at photos and old letters.
But Tomasz Holanek, who worked on studies of “deadbots” and “griefbots” with Nowaczyk-Basinska at Cambridge, says the technology raises important questions about the rights, dignity and power to give consent of people who are no longer alive. It also raises ethical concerns about whether a program serving the bereaved should advertise other products on its platform.
“These are very complex questions. And we don’t have good answers yet,” Holanek said.
Preparing for death
Company CEO LoCascio, who previously worked with Ballmer at a software company called LivePerson, said the AI version of Ballmer built by Aeternos uses in-house models as well as external large language models developed by major tech companies such as Meta, OpenAI and French firm Mistral AI.
Eternos records up to 300 phrases spoken by users and then compresses that information through a two-day computing process that captures a person’s voice. Users can further train the AI system by answering questions about their lives, political views, or various aspects of their personality.
The AI voice, which costs $15,000 to set up, can answer questions and tell stories about a person’s life without repeating pre-recorded answers. LoCascio said the legal rights for the AI belong to the person it was trained on and it could be treated like an asset and passed on to other family members.
Bomer has been spending most of his time lately feeding the AI phrases and sentences “so that the AI has the opportunity to synthesize my voice not only in flat mode, but also to capture emotions and moods in the voice.” And indeed the AI voicebot bears some resemblance to Bomer’s voice, although it omits his natural cadence of “hmms” and “ehs” and pauses in the middle of sentences.
Balmer is excited about his AI personality and says it’s only a matter of time AI Voice He’ll seem more human and even more like himself.
In the case of his wife of 61 years, he doesn’t think it will hinder her recovery from her loss.
“Think of it as being in a drawer somewhere, if you need it you can take it out, if you don’t you can put it away,” he told her as she came and sat down next to him on the couch.
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But Annette Bommer herself is more hesitant about the new software and whether she will use it after her husband’s death.
Right now, she probably envisions herself sitting on the couch with a glass of wine, caressing one of her husband’s old sweaters and reminiscing about him, rather than feeling the urge to talk to him via an AI voicebot — at least not during the first period of grieving.
“But then again, who knows what will happen when he’s gone,” she said, holding her husband’s hand and looking at him.
