In the Absence of a Lost Love, Will an Echo Do?
In 2013, Black Mirror released an episode in which a widow utilises technology allowing her to communicate with an AI imitation of her late husband, called Be Right Back. Eleven years since then, we now face a very real possibility of this technology coming to fruition.
This isn’t the first time the idea of an AI simulation of a deceased loved one has been portrayed in recent media. Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun deals with this question as well, and it’s also a minor side plot in the TV series, The Fall of the House of Usher.
Recent months have seen ChatGPT users create individualised chatbots based on specific material. Joanna Penn now has a Jo-Bot, which has been trained on all her nonfiction craft writing books and online material, and acts as a personal writing coach through ChatGPT.
The technology illustrated in Black Mirror, however, has already been around for years. Several companies have used a person’s digital footprint to create an AI version of them, some moving beyond chats to replicating voice.1
Both creepy and tempting
I’m sure we can all agree that such “resurrection” is creepy as fuck. The logical brain says it’s not the real person, just an echo. But let’s face it: when the unsent texts taunt you in the middle of the night and your body can’t remember how to breathe; when it’s been three years but feels like he just died yesterday and you want to talk to him just one more, just one more time—
It’s something I consider quite a lot: how far would I go to keep my loved one—any semblance of him—alive?
As macabre as it is, it’s also tempting, isn’t it?
We as humans have a deep need to connect with those we have lost. This is nothing new. Seances, cryogenics, etc., have been a part of the conversation since biblical times, yet with the technological advances and vast digital footprints we now leave behind, never before has such a thing been so possible.
It’s something worth seriously thinking about.
What might this look like for the grief process?
No imitation can replace what is lost…but—
As the Black Mirror episode posits, even a simulation based on a real-life person’s actual words, interactions, or voice, cannot capture the nuance or complexity of the person.
And it could be argued that such technology will only hinder the grieving process, until the loved one is no longer a memory but a ghost in the attic. Even so, in those blackest moments, I wonder.
Because when grief cradles me like that, my logic switches off and I swear I don’t really care anymore about ethical implications, the five stages of grief, “healing,”2 therapy; all of it goes whoosh. As someone who prides herself on setting aside emotions to make rational decisions, this admission grates on me.
The subject came up last week because May is almost here again; it’s a difficult month for our family, and I’m already starting to feel it even now in April.
“What if I could make an AI bot version I can talk to when I miss him an extra lot?” I asked my husband.
“You know that’s only going to make it worse.”
Of course, when my rational side comes back online, I agree with him.
I think of the line from Christopher Nolan’s film, Inception, “But I can't imagine you with all your complexity, all your perfection, all your imperfection. Look at you. You are just a shade of my real wife. You're the best I can do; but I'm sorry, you are just not good enough.”
My husband is right; it would not be enough. What I want from a resurrected Ren cannot be found in any AI simulation. There are things no simulation can give me, however extensive his online presence may have been, because they are things he hadn’t yet fully processed himself, that he didn’t have the time to talk through or tell me. There are things I want to know that I didn’t get the chance to ask when we were so busy just trying to keep him alive.
And on an even smaller scale, the AI simulation would keep everything about him static, frozen at the time he died instead of evolving with him as they would if he were still alive. More things AI can’t give me: would ceviche still be his favourite food today? Does he still love dark chocolate and peanut butter cups? Does he still want to retire in Finland?
In the end, I’d be left feeling only a greater absence carved out by my attempts to bring him back, as is the tale of all such efforts.
In the end, there is no shortcut to grieving. The only way through it is through it.