There are already thousands of Chinese people who have a deepfake of a dead close person at home. A video avatar that allows them to talk to a loved one who is no longer there, as if they were having a video call.
These deepfakes started out as very simple, cartoon-like reproductions. But the evolution of technology has meant that today, for less than three thousand dollars – according to MIT Technology Review – you can have a hyper-realistic replica of your loved ones on a screen or tablet and “have conversations with it”. Demand is growing. More and more companies are offering this product and there are voices asking whether this can contribute to or hinder coping with grief in a healthy way.
Grief is a very intimate process and everyone experiences it in their own way. Maybe for some people a deepfake can help them and for others, on the other hand, it can make it harder for them to accept their loss. It is not uncommon to talk, even if only mentally, with people we have lost. Nor do it in front of a picture of him. It is another thing to come to believe that the answer that a computer program gives you through the tablet is the answer of the loved one.
Probably, if the practice spreads, we will soon have studies by psychologists on the effects that deepfakes can have on the mourning process. But there is another question to which we should give an answer. Would the dead person like a computer program to speak for them?
Our image and our voice are basic elements of our identity. unique No two people or two voices are the same. And in the debate about the ethical use of AI, it is considered that fake videos of people saying or doing things they have never said or done without their consent should not be generated.
If this is so for the living, there is no reason to have less respect for the dead. What if the answers given by the computer program do not match the ones the dead person would give? Or if that person simply would have preferred not to be duplicated on a tablet for the rest of their days? Maybe soon, in our testament, we will have to talk about deepfakes.
