In the era of AI, there is a second option in the face of death?

Using AI to "resurrect" the deceased attracts attention. Courtesy of Visual China

    China Youth Daily, China Youth Network Intern Reporter Xi Congcong Reporter Li Ruoyi

    During the Spring Festival this year, Luo Peixi used AI technology to "resurrect" her grandmother without telling her mother, and she synthesized her mother's current appearance with the old photos left by her grandmother. After more than 60 years, my mother and grandmother finally "met" again, which was her birthday gift to my mother. After receiving the gift, the mother's expression was recorded by Luo Peixi on video, "She laughed out loud like a child, laughed and cried." She must not have imagined that technology had developed to such an extent. ”

    In fact, the restoration and synthesis of old photos is only the primary form of AI "resurrection". Some time ago, several videos of AI "resurrecting" deceased stars attracted attention, and many people suddenly realized that AI technology has developed to the stage where the deceased can "speak", which has also triggered a series of discussions on ethics, law and other issues.

    In fact, with the help of AI technology to express the thoughts of loved ones, different business models have gradually formed - some use AI technology to make photos "move" and simulate the voice of the deceased to have real-time conversations with family members, while others generate digital humans for them while they are alive, and make them more "real" through repeated training, in order to achieve "digital immortality......

    In the age of AI, do we already have a second option in the face of death?

    AI "Resurrection"

    Luo Peixi recalled that some time ago, her mother's sister died, and the whole family was immersed in a sad atmosphere. At the memorial service, she overheard her uncle say that her mother was only 3 years old when her grandmother died. At that moment, she decided to give her mother such a special birthday gift. Later, the photo was framed and hung in a prominent place in the home, where it can be seen every day, "filling in the gaps in my mother's childhood memories."

    Lo was previously a social product manager, and the technology wasn't complicated for her. She used AI tools to first recolor old photos of her grandmother, then aged her portraits, and finally combined her mother's photos with them. "In the future, if there is a similar but better technology that can help the family of the deceased through the difficult times after the loss, it may be a good thing to use [this technology] correctly." ”

    Wang Tao is a practitioner in the AI industry, and since December last year, he and his friends have been helping people in need "resurrect" their deceased relatives for free. This was done because of a message asking for help, when a woman wanted to use AI to "resurrect" her deceased husband to make amends. Wang Tao: They helped her.

    Immediately after that, many people came to them one after another. Among them, Wang Tao was impressed by a middle-aged man who wanted to "resurrect" his grandmother as a birthday gift for his father. After receiving the "resurrection" video, the middle-aged man specially sent a voice thanks: "The 80-year-old father watched the video over and over again for a night, crying while watching it, muttering 'I have a mother'. This made Wang Tao and his friends feel very deeply, and they insisted on doing it for more than two months. Later, a friend offered to commercialize the service, which Wang Tao could not accept. In his opinion, "the algorithms and data used are free, and you should not make money in this form", so he gave up on this matter.

    Also last year, Ah Liang, who quit his job, began to engage in AI "resurrection" services for deceased relatives. What he didn't expect was that more than 3 months later, AI's practice of "resurrecting" deceased stars attracted attention, and what Ah Liang did was also pushed to the forefront. Ah Liang feels that "AI's practice of 'resurrecting' deceased stars has won traffic in a rude form, but has damaged the reputation of the entire industry." ”

    After that, in order to avoid risks, many online platforms have limited the flow of content related to AI "resurrection", and Ah Liang has also been affected, and the number of likes on the videos he posted has plummeted from the previous triple-digit to the current single-digit, and some videos have even been directly blocked or deleted, which has significantly reduced the number of customers.

    "Virtual Conversations"

    In the comment area of related topics on online platforms, netizens' attitudes towards the "resurrection" of deceased relatives by AI are clearly polarized. Some netizens feel that the AI "resurrection" can "give us a chance to say what we want to say but didn't have time to say, and help us let go of our obsessions". Some netizens also objected to this, "I don't even want to face the photos of my deceased relatives, how can I choose this kind of 'resurrection'?"

    Before entering this industry, Ah Liang did market research, and he found that the demand for "resurrecting" the deceased does exist, "but the current technology may not be able to fully meet it." Wang Tao thinks, "There are still obvious flaws in the current effect, such as the voice has many loopholes, and the dialogue is not so silky."

    AI "resurrection" of the deceased needs to provide relatively clear photos and rich sound and other materials, but at present, among the customers received by Ah Liang, eighty percent do not have original sound files, and the rest are of low quality. In light of the recent controversy, he began to gradually adjust his business thinking, focusing on returning to text communication and not focusing too much on sound and image.

    Some time ago, he launched the text dialogue function on the WeChat service account, which only needs to spend dozens of seconds to answer a few questions, and the AI can be "trained" to have certain personality traits of deceased relatives, and text conversations can be conducted with users in front of the screen, and it is free. The service is "currently being used by nearly 2,000 people, which is already more than the number of paying customers."

    Previously, many people approached Ah Liang to propose the need to "resurrect" their deceased relatives, but few people paid in the end. Later, he found a batch of low-cost AI large model resources, and built a "virtual dialogue" function on this basis. Without a lot of publicity, many people started using it one after another. In Ah Liang's view, the design of this service is very simple, "It is precisely because it is simple enough that many people are easy to get started, and in a scene like WeChat, everyone will feel very real." ”

    However, as the number of people using "virtual conversations" increases, so does the risk. For example, how should the conversation data of less than 2,000 people be stored and whether there is a risk of privacy leakage? A Liang said that the data is actually stored on the WeChat platform, and they only have the right to check, and the relevant responsibilities are not clearly defined. To circumvent these issues, his team is working on an app, which he hopes will be more autonomous and controllable in the future, while doing better with conversational performance and security measures.

    At present, Ah Liang's team consists of less than 10 people, and most of them are technicians in the AI industry, most of whom are part-time. Although the overall situation is in a state of loss, the cost of customer acquisition is high, and the actual number of people who pay is relatively small, he firmly believes that with the change of people's concepts and the fact that many young people in need have become the main users, "this thing will definitely make money in the long run."

    "Digital Immortality"

    In the movie "The Wandering Earth 2", Tu Hengyu stored and uploaded the consciousness of his daughter Yaya, who died in a car accident, to the digital world, trying to make her daughter achieve "digital immortality", which attracted a lot of attention and discussion. "Digital immortality" is actually the use of AI technology to create a digital identity that can exist in the virtual world by analyzing and simulating individual data, so as to achieve human "immortality". However, from the perspective of reality, AI technology is far from developing to this point, and can only simulate human life behaviors and key characteristics.

    Liu Xiaoben's entrepreneurial project is related to "digital immortality". Born in 2000, he is the leader of the entrepreneurial team and a graduate student in the philosophy of science and technology. Liu Xiaoben and his team believe that "digital immortality" will become the second choice for human beings to face death in addition to the traditional funeral industry in the future.

    He believes that "digital immortality" is divided into two processes: "data retention" and "data deduction". The generation process of the recently hotly discussed "resurrection" video of the deceased is a typical "data interpretation". "Data retention" is the collection of a person's biological data (such as video, audio, etc.) and organizing it into a dataset that can be processed by AI. Liu Xiaoben and his team are currently focusing on these two processes, and advocate that the "data retention" link should be oriented to the living, through interviews, audio collection, video collection and other forms, to retain more real data, so as to facilitate the subsequent "data interpretation" work, and finally complete the "digital immortality".

    As an entrepreneurial project, Liu Xiaoben's team currently has 5 people, all of whom are students, and the project has been incubated and landed, and the school has given venue support. "Achieving millions of revenues" is Liu Xiaoben's goal this year, and he feels that "there is a 30%-50% success rate".

    Yu Hao, who has worked in the funeral industry for four or five years, feels that the traditional funeral industry is more about providing physical facilities and services, and lacks cultural inheritance and spiritual companionship. "Today, AI technology provides a vehicle to better meet people's spiritual needs. Later, he focused on digital life services, including exploring "AI + funeral services" related businesses.

    In 2022, at the memorial service of Academician Wu Mengchao, the "father of liver surgery in China", with the help of AI and other technical means, Academician Wu's virtual image opened a "time and space dialogue" with his former colleagues and students, and many people present had red eyes. This link is planned and executed by Yu Hao, and he hopes to complete a "warm farewell" for Academician Wu in this way. Today, digital funerals have become one of the company's main businesses.

    Digital humans are also Yu Hao's main business. Unlike AI "resurrecting" the deceased, Yu Hao is more likely to be exposed to situations where customers require the generation and training of digital humans to be completed before they die. Among them, there are children who want to generate digital humans for their parents, and there are also elderly people in their fifties and sixties who take the initiative to ask for digital humans. They hope to make digital humans more real through continuous interactive training, so as to become a way to continue life.

    Two or three months ago, Yu Hao came into contact with a client, and the doctor said that her father could only live for another two years, and she hoped to generate a digital human for her father to "keep" the memory of his father's gradual decline. According to Yu Hao, the generation of the company's digital human generally refers to six dimensions: image, voice, expression, personality, knowledge base and memory. Among them, the last step of "memory replication" is the most difficult, because memory uploading is a continuous process that can only be achieved through continuous communication with digital humans.

    How privacy is protected

    The "seed customer" of Liu Xiaoben's team is a middle-aged man in his forties and fifties, who is touched by the concept of "digital immortality" and is ready to create a digital life for his parents. At present, Liu Xiaoben and his parents have been conducting oral history interviews for three months, and they will continue to do so in the future. "When the old man knows that this thing will be left to the next generation, the attitude is still very positive." But from the idea to the reality, they are experiencing various challenges such as "how to standardize data privacy protection", and Liu Xiaoben hopes that a third party will supervise their work.

    Ethical and legal controversies are also unavoidable in Yuhao's related business. Yu Hao said that they will try to avoid risks from two aspects: "First, the generation of digital humans must be authorized by the person, and if it is the deceased, it needs to be authorized by the next of kin, and secondly, the relevant data will be encrypted and protected and uploaded to the cloud, and this process will seek cooperation with relevant government departments." ”

    In fact, whether it is AI "resurrection" or "digital immortality", it is not based on new technology. Wang Tao has long been concerned about the development of AI technology, and he explained that these application directions were repeatedly mentioned by "insiders" in 2018, and it is only in 2022 that these application directions can really be implemented with the successful function of AI robots to have a comprehensive dialogue with humans.

    He is not surprised by the controversy caused by the recent "resurrection" of AI, "which is currently in a gray area". Wang Tao said that the new application of technology will inevitably cause controversy, and the sooner controversy arises, the better, "only in this way can the technology slowly 'grow'." ”

    Of course, the so-called "growing up" cannot just be blind business expansion, but the relevant application direction has laws and rules to follow.

    Wang Hui, a lawyer at Beijing Jingshi Law Firm, said that according to the "Provisions on the Administration of Deep Synthesis of Internet Information Services", which came into effect on January 10, 2023, "where deep synthesis service providers and technical supporters provide biometric information editing functions such as faces and voices, they shall prompt the users of deep synthesis services to inform the individuals being edited in accordance with the law and obtain their separate consent." Therefore, when using the deep synthesis service, it is necessary to obtain the consent of the individual being edited, and if the person being edited is a deceased person, the consent of relatives who have the obligation to protect the portrait rights and interests of the deceased should be obtained.

    In addition, the Provisions on the Administration of Deep Synthesis of Internet Information Services also clearly regulate the "management of data and technology": deep synthesis service providers and technical supporters shall strengthen the management of training data and take necessary measures to ensure the security of training data;

    Lawyer Wang Hui said that with the development and application of AI technology, a large amount of personal data is used to train AI models to improve their accuracy and effectiveness. This data includes, but is not limited to, personally identifiable information, location data, spending habits, and even biometric information. If these sensitive data are improperly handled, it may lead to serious privacy leakage, which in turn damages the rights and interests of individuals and even threatens the public safety of society. Therefore, it is necessary to continue to improve the relevant laws such as "data privacy and protection".

    Shen Yang, a professor and doctoral supervisor at Tsinghua University's School of Journalism, suggested that on the one hand, developers and users should take responsibility to ensure that AI technology does not mislead users or affect human emotions, and on the other hand, they should also pay attention to privacy protection and data security. In related services, AI needs to process a large amount of sensitive personal data (such as facial expressions, voice intonation, and even physiological data) to analyze the user's emotional state, which can pose a serious threat to the user's privacy if this data is misused or leaked.

    Is it okay to "AI + emotion"?

    In addition to how to protect user privacy, Ah Liang will also pay attention to the physical and mental state of users of the "virtual dialogue" service. In his view, the problems of technology infringement and fraud, which are widely discussed at present, are all solved, and can be restrained by relying on the law. However, the user's physical and mental state is difficult to control and process, for example, some people will become addicted to this function because they miss their deceased relatives, or if the AI says a wrong sentence, it may also have an impact on the user's psychology.

    "A lot of times, even if you do something to circumvent it, such as not being able to talk about 'suicide,' the user may still be hurt by a certain sentence from the AI. Ah Liang hopes to cooperate with research institutions to pay attention to this issue.

    Wei Ran is a national second-level psychological counselor, a registered psychologist of the Chinese Psychological Society, in her opinion, the emergence of AI "resurrection" of the deceased and other technologies can indeed alleviate the pain of bereavement to a certain extent, make up for some unfinished regrets, especially the regret that there is no opportunity to say goodbye to the deceased, and the right use can help the living better accept the death of their loved ones.

    At the same time, Wei Ran also found that related technology could become an obstacle to the grief process. She further explained that the psychological response to death is generally agreed upon by the psychological community as the "five stages of grief", namely denial, anger, bargaining, frustration and acceptance. The "bargaining" stage refers to the fact that the living will be unable to accept the loss of a loved one and will try to exert control to change the situation.

    "This is the stage where the living will buy the relevant services. When the living see the image of the deceased, it can not only relieve the pain of lovesickness, but also create the illusion of confronting the god of death and controlling life and death, which will make the living feel a strong sense of control and have a positive emotional experience. However, if you indulge in this sense of control, it also hinders the natural completion of the grieving process. In other words, the living will be stuck in the 'past' and will not be able to really move forward. ”

    Professor Shen Yang found that there are two obviously opposite directions in the current application of AI technology, one is the rational development path of AI, which "desperately emphasizes that it is only a large language model", and the other is the emotional development path of AI, which "does everything possible to prove that it can become a human partner". The AI "resurrection" and "digital immortality" businesses are the latter, trying to achieve revenue through the "AI + emotion" model.

    He said that in the future, long-term sociological and psychological research should be carried out to evaluate the impact of emotional AI on human behavior, social structure and mental health, and to ensure that technological development is in harmony with the sustainable development of human society. At the same time, it is necessary to develop inclusive and adaptable algorithm models to improve the accuracy of AI's emotional cognition, so that it can learn and understand the emotional expressions of different groups of people.

    So, in the age of AI, has "resurrection" or "digital immortality" become our second option in the face of death?

    Baidu's "Wenxin Yiyan" AI model provides the answer: although AI "resurrection" or "digital immortality" provides us with a new way to face death in technology, we still need to respect the natural laws of life, and at the same time deeply think about and respond to the resulting ethical, philosophical and social challenges.

    (At the request of the interviewee, Wang Tao and A Liang are pseudonyms in the article)

Source: China Youth Daily