I'm pretty sure I have heard about exactly that some months ago.
The people involved in the experiment were very happy, touched to tears, for being able to commune with their deceased. Frankly, I don't buy it. Either they are extremely naïve, and were chosen for the experiment precisely because of that, or they feel some sort of obligation to say nice things about the company that gave them this opportunity.
Thing is, most people are very sensitive to the small and not-so-small differences between a real person and a high level AI animation, which only makes the whole thing weird and funny (in a bad way).
If it was perfect enough to (continually) fool your senses, now that would be creepy.

If you ask me, it's a party trick. Enough to fool you in a short YT video, but not really useful.
That said, sometimes a party trick is all that's needed to seriously fool many people.

PS: ABBA also did something similar although they're still alive.

i would not want to see my deceased father to speak "to me" , i found it very creepy.
even tho i havent shed a single tear in decades i dont like to see him speak.

There is a historical parallel, it seems to me. After the First World War, a big spiritualist movement developed in the UK. There were seances going on everywhere. So many families had lost sons and couldn't process the grief, so they turned to mediums who claimed they could conjure up the spirits of those dead boys. They would subtly question the bereaved to obtain information about their lost one (such as his name and what regiment he had served in) and then they dished it up again as "messages" from beyond the grave. Apparently a lot of people derived real comfort from this scam and really did believe that the medium spoke with that person's voice. Because they wanted to believe it.

This is just a technological version of the same thing.

It's not really a parallel, just a continuation of the same thing with different means. Talking to the dead (or wishing to) must be one of the most common traits in every human society since forever.

I would lump this together with the idea – so far successfully rejected by the Screen Actor's Guild and by various estates – that we should now have "CG renderings" of famous now-deceased actors and actresses, such as James Dean or even Carrie Fisher (RIP), "starring in movies." (Of course without paying for it ... yeah.)

I wonder what the legal position is. Who owns such an image? I have rights in my own image while I am alive but what happens when I'm dead?

Even when living, it's complicated, and varies between countries.

In the UK, if someone takes a photograph of you, the photogapher has ownership/copyright of that photo, but what they can legally do with it various depending on circumstances, sometimes (but not always) including whether you as the subject have given consent.

A primary factor is whether the photographer and subject are deemed to be in a public place - which is not simply a question of being on publicly-owned land, but also whether there is a reasonable expectation of privacy, (e.g. public changing rooms vs an invited press conference).

Wikimedia has an article giving its stance on things: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Photographs_of_identifiable_people

It does point out that commercial use may be limited after death, but doesn't give details on that front. If you had an estate looking after your interests, they would presumably have some ability to license/limit such use.


On the specific subject of ancestry sites and creating videos, if a user uploads their own images, it wouldn't surprise me if, in the smallprint, the sites claims consent to do whatever they want with the uploaded content.

If the images are of a different person (who hasn't agreed to those terms), it may still be considered acceptable use if the derived videos are not being published, but only displayed to the user who uploaded the source material.

I guess anyone concerned about this should discuss it with family, and put a line in their will to confirm their position - even if that's not legally binding, one would hope relatives would be respectful of those wishes.


(IANAL; none of this post is legal advice.)

I once worked on a public photo shoot where my job was to secure the "model releases." If a person appeared anywhere in a photograph that we might use, that person had to be hunted-down to sign a release form. Otherwise, the photograph could not be used. (Since the image would appear in a magazine with hundreds of thousands of paper copies printed and mailed, the company could not afford the potential liability of "failing to mind its P's and Q's.")

Not surprisingly, there are today sites like "releaseforms.org."

I'm necrobumping this thread because I found this article in my FF Pocket this morning. It describes precisely the sort of thing that was predicted, now in full swing in China. The intersection of AI technology like ChatGPT (which didn't exist when I started this thread) and the Chinese traditions of ancestor worship has sparked an explosion of "deathbots". Not all of these deepfake the physical appearance and voice of the dead person but some do, and I'm sure a lot of money is being made out of it. They also seem to be very addictive for mourners (again, this was predicted).

People who live for the past and/or the future can never find happiness.
It's Buddha's teaching, not mine.