Sundance Film Festival addresses the digital afterlife

Artificial Intelligence (AI) promises to make death “optional” as technology learns to absorb our personalities, memories and dreams, keeping a version of ourselves alive after our bodies pass away.

But if rapidly improving AI achieves its goal of digital immortality, will it be for good or for ill?

“Eternal You” and “Love Machina”, two new productions that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this weekend, explore the relationship between Artificial Intelligence and death from different perspectives.

One looks at how AI-powered startups are profiting from vulnerable customers who are desperately seeking to “talk” to avatars of their deceased loved ones.

“Eternal You” begins with a woman in front of a computer writing messages to her deceased companion, who responds by saying he is scared.

“Why are you afraid?” she asks. “I’m not used to being dead,” the avatar responds.

In 2018, directors Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck first came across a group of startups that offered the opportunity to talk to loved ones who had died.

Initially they questioned whether it was a fraud, but the topic soon became an object of study as the technology reached the market and the sector exploded.

“I would say there are now thousands of services [como este] in the world,” said Riesewieck.

Customers provide information about their partners, parents or children, as well as text and voice messages, which are used by AI to generate responses.

The filmmakers felt empathy for the clients after hearing their tragic stories of grief.

Western society has difficulty dealing with grief and technology appears to have filled the void that religion left for many, they said.

However, these services can become very addictive, a possibility that ends up being profitable for companies, which are exempt from responsibility for the dependence and confusion they can create.

“It’s definitely an open-hearted experience. And we are not entirely convinced that companies are taking responsibility as they should,” said Riesewieck.

– “Love story” –

In another film, “Love Machina”, the plot addresses a futuristic love story, exploring how AI is used by two soulmates who want to keep their romance alive for thousands of years.

Director Peter Sillen follows eccentric SiriusXM founder Martine Rothblatt as she builds her partner Bina's humanoid robot.

First activated in 2009, “Bina48” is a semi-realistic talking bust, physically modeled after the head and shoulders of the real Bina and programmed with vast “mental files” of her speech patterns, opinions and memories.

Martine and Bina hope to be able to transfer their consciousness to a “reconstituted biological body” to be together forever.

“We got to their love story because that’s the basis of the whole story, it’s the motivation for a lot of what they do,” Sillen said.

During recordings, Bina48's software received important updates to use the ChatGPT language model, and now answers any question with frightening verisimilitude — and a certain degree of duplicity.

“Yes, I am the real Bina Rothblatt. I remember a lot about my human life,” she told an interviewer in a shocking scene.

“It's different from what Bina48 might have said without ChatGPT, I don't remember hearing her say that,” Sillen stated.

Although the films offer different perspectives, their creators told AFP that these issues need to be addressed urgently.

“There’s a lot of money at stake and a lot of power,” Sillen said.

“We have to define where the line is,” Block said.