{"id":8442,"date":"2024-05-17T00:06:05","date_gmt":"2024-05-17T00:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=8442"},"modified":"2024-05-17T00:06:05","modified_gmt":"2024-05-17T00:06:05","slug":"the-man-who-turned-his-dead-father-into-a-chatbot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=8442","title":{"rendered":"The man who turned his dead father into a chatbot"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Back in 2016, James Vlahos received some terrible news \u2013 his father was diagnosed with terminal cancer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved my dad, I was losing my dad,\u201d says James, who is based in Oakland, California.<\/p>\n

He was determined to make the most of the remaining time he had with his father. \u201cI did an oral history project with him, where I just spent hours, and hours, and hours just audio recording his life story.\u201d<\/p>\n

This coincided with a time when James was starting to explore a career in AI, so his project soon evolved.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, gosh, what if I could make something interactive out of this?\u201d he says. \u201cFor a way to more richly keep his memories, and some sense of his personality, which was so wonderful, to keep that around.\u201d<\/p>\n

James\u2019 father John passed away in 2017, but not before James had turned what he\u2019d recorded into an AI-powered chatbot that could answer questions about his dad\u2019s life \u2013 in his father\u2019s voice.<\/p>\n

James Vlahos spent hours recording the memories of his dad John (James Vlahos)<\/p>\n

Such use of AI to artificially bring people back to life has long been explored in science fiction, but developments in AI technology have now made it possible in real life. In 2019, James turned his chatbot into an app and business called HereafterAI, which allows users to do the same for their loved ones.<\/p>\n

He adds that while the chatbot didn\u2019t remove the pain of his dad\u2019s death, it does gives him \u201cmore than I otherwise would have\u201d. \u201cIt\u2019s not him retreating into this very fuzzy memory. I have this wonderful interactive compendium I can turn to.\u201d<\/p>\n

While users of HearafterAI can upload photos of their loved one, to appear on the screen of their smart phone or computer when they use the app, another firm that turns people into AI chatbots goes much further.<\/p>\n

South Korea\u2019s DeepBrain AI creates a video-based avatar of a person, by shooting hours of video and audio to capture their face, voice and mannerisms.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are cloning the person\u2019s likeness to 96.5% of the similarity of the original person,\u201d says Michael Jung, DeepBrain\u2019s chief financial officer. \u201cSo mostly the family don\u2019t feel uncomfortable talking with the deceased family member, even though it is an AI avatar.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company believes such technology can be an important part of developing a \u201cwell dying\u201d culture \u2013 where we prepare for our death in advance, leaving family histories, stories and memories as a form of \u201cliving legacy\u201d.<\/p>\n

The process isn\u2019t cheap though, and users cannot create the avatar themselves. Instead, they have to pay the firm up to $50,000 (\u00a339,000) for the filming process and the creation of their avatar.<\/p>\n

Despite this high cost, some investors are confident it will be popular, and DeepBrain raised $44m in its last funding round.<\/p>\n

Yet psychologist Laverne Antrobus says that great care should be taken when using such \u201cgrief tech\u201d at times of heightened emotion.<\/p>\n

\u201cLoss is something that catches us out,\u201d she says. \u201cYou can think you\u2019re pretty much close to being OK, then something can take you right back.<\/p>\n

Yet psychologist Laverne Antrobus says that great care should be taken when using such \u201cgrief tech\u201d at times of heightened emotion.<\/p>\n

\u201cLoss is something that catches us out,\u201d she says. \u201cYou can think you\u2019re pretty much close to being OK, then something can take you right back.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea that you might then have the opportunity to hear their voice, and hear their words spoken through them, might be quite discombobulating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms Antrobus adds that people shouldn\u2019t rush to use a chatbot of a lost loved one. \u201cYou\u2019d have to feel quite solid before using something like this. Take things very, very slowly.\u201d<\/p>\n

A woman touching the avatar of an elderly relative that was made by Korean firm (Deepbrain AI)<\/p>\n

The way we grieve is specific to each of us, but that doesn\u2019t mean there aren\u2019t common experiences.<\/p>\n

Red tape is one of them. Banks, businesses and social media sites that your loved one used will need you to complete a raft of paperwork to close accounts, and end direct debits, subscriptions and the like.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was looking at more than two dozen companies, and having to phone every single one of them and tell them about my loss,\u201d says Eleanor Wood, 41, from South Devon. Her husband Stephen died in March of last year after a serious illness.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the firms were great and straightforward. Some were outright incompetent and callous. They created more stress and emotional distress at a time when I was already at my lowest possible emotional ebb.\u201d<\/p>\n

To lessen the administrative burden of the recently bereaved, Settld is a UK online platform that contacts private sector organisations on their behalf.<\/p>\n

The user uploads the required paperwork, and the list of everyone that needs to be contacted. Settld then automatically writes and sends off the emails. You can then log back in to check that the firms in question have replied, and that the issues have been dealt with.<\/p>\n

It works with 950 bodies ranging from banks, to social media firms, to utility companies. It was co-founded in 2020 by Vicky Wilson following the death of her grandmother.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more we can do to use technology to lift that admin burden, the better,\u201d she says.\u201d When someone dies, to deal with the average estate, we\u2019re looking at around 300 hours across 146 tasks.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt normally takes around nine months to wrap up. We reckon around 70% of that work can and should be automated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vicky Wilson got the idea for Settld following the death of her grandmother (Settld)<\/p>\n

The grief tech sector, also called \u201cdeath tech\u201d, is now valued\u00a0at more than \u00a3100bn globally,<\/a>\u00a0according to tech news website TechRound.<\/p>\n

This growth was fuelled by the coronavirus pandemic, says David Soffer, its editor-in-chief.<\/p>

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Back in 2016, James Vlahos received some terrible news \u2013 his father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. \u201cI loved my dad, I was losing my dad,\u201d says James, who is… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8441,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_2277560469115098_106292521332774":"","twitter_aToxNzczMzI3Njk4OTg4ODUxMjAxOw==_1773327698988851200":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}