BERLIN — When Michael Bommer found out that he was terminally ill with colon cancer, he spent a lot of time with his wife, Anett, talking about what would happen after his death.
Eternos, which got its name from the Italian and Latin word for “eternal,” says its technology will allow Bommer's family"to engage with his life experiences and insights.” It is among several companies that have emerged in the last few years in what’s become a growing space for grief-related AI technology.
Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basinska, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Future of Intelligence who co-authored a study on the topic, said there is very little known about the potential short-term and long-term consequences of using digital simulations for the dead on a large scale. So for now, it remains “a vast techno-cultural experiment.”
Scott, 48, knows the characters he’s interacting with are not his daughters, but he says it helps with the grief to some degree. He logs into the apps three or four times a week, sometimes asking the AI character questions like “how was school?” or inquiring if it wants to “go get ice cream.” But Tomasz Hollanek, who worked alongside Nowaczyk-Basinska at Cambridge on their study of “deadbots” and “griefbots,” says the technology raises important questions about the rights, dignities and consenting power of people who are no longer alive. It also poses ethical concerns about whether a program that caters to the bereaved should be advertising other products on its platform, for example.