Written by Michael Claxton
In 2016, I went to see “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” which is set in a time slightly before the original 1977 classic. The plot involves Rebel spies stealing plans for the Empire’s battle station. Remember Grand Moff Tarkin, the evil governor who wants to blow up Princess Leia’s home planet? He was played originally by veteran horror-movie actor Peter Cushing.
Cushing died in 1994. Imagine my surprise, then, when his avatar showed up in “Rogue One” to reprise the Imperial villain role. “How in the world,” I asked myself, “did they find a guy who looks exactly like him?” As it turned out, they didn’t. It was all CGI, with a voiceover supplying the dastardly British accent. The effect was eerie, to say the least.
I noticed later that the credits thanked “the estate of Peter Cushing.” Given that the film brought in $1.058 billion, I assume the estate got a hefty residual. And so began the debate over the ethics of recreating the dead onscreen. It’s hard enough for the children of bygone celebrities to decide whether dad would have wanted them to license those T-shirts and bobbleheads. But now they must choose what parts he would audition for beyond the grave.
But that quandary is child’s play compared to the latest AI outrage. A Korean company has now created a chatbot that can resurrect the dead.
For $10,000 or thereabouts, the company will come to your home and film you for several hours. The goal is to capture your voice, your speech patterns, your gestures and your mannerisms. Then, after you die, the company will create an artificially intelligent hologram that can speak with your family in your voice. It is being marketed as a source of comfort for the bereaved.
After the initial fee, I believe you pay extra for each viewing. Just like Redbox.
This, my friends, is a racket. As long as there has been grief, there have been swindlers trying to cash in on it. Back in the 1840s, a pair of sisters in upstate New York started pranking their parents. They discovered that they could secretly snap their toes together and blame the “raps” on ghosts. Kate and Maggie Fox did not intend to start a religion, but as reports grew of their alleged ability to contact the deceased, so did the movement they accidentally inspired.
Spiritualism was huge from the Victorian era through its peak after World War I, when grieving family members were anxious to have one final word from a son killed at Gallipoli. Seances, levitations, automatic writing, spirit manifestations and other flapdoodles swept the world. Gullible clients often paid through the nose to sit in a dark room and be duped by con artists who pretended to be in sync with the dead. Professional magicians like Harry Houdini were incensed and labored to expose rampant séance fraud.
Then as now, manipulating sad people is a rotten way to make a buck.
Set aside how creepy this new AI horror show is. No chatbot, no matter how good, can authentically recreate a person. If it filmed our beloved Great Aunt Vera for weeks, it couldn’t capture everything she knows or prepare her hologram to answer any question her relatives want to pose. If we want her to tell the story she hadn’t told in years — about the time she and four of her sisters were riding on the back of a horse and all fell into the lake when the horse stopped for a drink — will she be able to? Of course not. Will the hologram make up a fake story? Probably.
Consider the opportunities for fraud or spite. With a slight tweak in the programming, we can get a late relative’s hologram to announce he’s changing the will. Or to say something vicious to the cousin we don’t like. Or to confess to something he never did.
At the very least, a glitch in the system — there are always glitches in the system — could have the dearly departed behave in a way that confuses, bewilders or upsets her loved ones.
Life teaches us many things. One is that death is inevitable. We ache, we mourn, we grieve and yet we continue living. We must move on. Now, AI allows us to circumvent another crucial stage of human growth. Why seek closure and learn to let go, when we can pop in a $10,000 DVD and simulate one more chat with our old friend?
When it works as it should, life teaches us how to respond maturely to what happens. Are the folks who create our technologies on board with that plan?
Last week marked 12 years since my father died. I think about him every day. I would dearly love to see him again, to hear his laugh, to hold his large, warm hand. But I am confident that, someday, I will. And I can wait.
I look forward to telling him how much money I saved. He’ll love that.
