I have reported on and studied some incredibly dark topics, but there’s a rabbit hole underneath the practice of AI resurrections (ie, trying to recreate dead people through AI personas) that makes QAnon look like a fun walk through the park. And no one is paying attention.
The practice of creating AI personas to represent dead people — including using their likeness, image, voice, and words — is disturbing enough on its face, and of course very rarely involves consent. But it’s also totally unregulated. Because no one is paying attention.
There are researchers out here, warning that they have seen AI resurrections stalk their family members online beyond the point that their family members want to interact with them. Imagine an AI persona of your dead loved one begging to talk to you… and having to say no.
Imagine realizing that you created something that you don’t want to exist anymore & having to make the decision to kill the AI persona of your dead loved one. Do you talk with them before you pull the plug? Do you have a funeral? Or do you just turn off the computer & walk away?
And I’m sorry, but if you send your dead kid’s AI persona to try to convince me to support some policy, i’m probably going to call the psych ward at the local hospital because you need help if you would even consider doing that.
I understand why these parents want their children to have a voice in certain discussions, like the gun control debate. But at the end of the day, their dead children are not voting members of society, and do not have to live with the consequences of their advocacy. We do.
And although their children certainly understand better than anyone else what it’s like to stare down the barrel of a gun, that doesn’t mean they know the best ways to prevent other children from the same fate, and it’s inappropriate to put them on a pedestal above reproach.
In one instance, Parkland shooting victims were made into AI griefbots and forced to make robocalls. Some of them ended up threatening to harass members of Congress until they gave into their demands. Is that how democracy is supposed to work? Dead people forcing Congress’ hand?
And who gets to decide who is allowed to have a posthumous AI persona and who doesn’t? Can Jeffrey Epstein have one? Jeffrey Dahmer? Can they lobby Congress, too? Who makes that call and how do they get appointed to that position? No answers. No one is paying attention.
And also, what happens when someone trains another AI model on the data that your dead kid’s persona was trained on? Are you OK with having digital clones of your dead kid running around the Internet? If not, what do you plan to do about it?
And that’s what I mean when I say there’s a rabbit hole that goes down much, much farther than anyone wants to travel. Perhaps we will find a totally healthy use for griefbots one day. But right now, I see desperate, grieving parents being exploited by tech giants for profit.
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