Artificial intelligence to talk to the dead is a deadly bore

Until a few years ago, the ambition was impressive: to do literally talk about the dead using artificial intelligence. With this goal, startups such as Eternime or the bot Roman designed by the Russian engineer Eugenia Kuyda. Either way, the idea behind it was the same: in an age when we leave one behind impressive amount of data that say a lot about us (conversations on Whatsapp, posts on Facebook and Instagram, work emails, Google searches, etc. etc.), an artificial intelligence could be able to analyze this amount of data and get to know our way of communicating so well and our personality to create a chatbot – with which we can communicate via text – capable of replicate our behavior and thus make us live, in a certain always, forever.

Not only that: with the most recent advances in deep learning (just think of deepfakes), it would be possible also recreate the features of the deceased and his voice, offering the opportunity for those who have just lost someone to communicate by voice and video with the deceased loved one. Starting from here, one can get to imagine a future in style Black Mirror (in the episode Be Right Back) in which a robot indistinguishable from the original version is delivered to our home (although disturbing, in Japan there are those who are working on something similar).

So far, the theory. Because then – with the passing of the years and as the limits of deep learning became more and more evident – it was understood how these projects were much more complex than expected and decidedly less convincing results promises. And in fact Eternime has closed its doors, Eugenia Kuyda’s project has turned into a classic entertainment chatbot known as Replika and many others have lost track.

Following the failed attempts to make the dead speak, we find ourselves in 2022 to be amazed by the project launched by Stephen Smithfounder of the Californian StoryFile. Also in this case, the goal is to give the deceased the possibility to continue communicating with friends and relatives using artificial intelligence and thus allowing – as seen in the video published by Reuters – from answer the questions on video posed by participants in their own funeral.