I had a conversation with my deceased mother in AI – it was creepy but helped me move forward

strange but true

by alexandra klausner

Do you believe in AI angels?

Sky News reported that Shirine Maras, who lives in Berlin, Germany, lost her mother to kidney failure in 2018 at the age of 82.

Shirine, who had just given birth to her first child, Ishtar, before her mother died, felt insurmountable grief and turned to AI to connect with her mother, who died four years later.

Shireen had wanted her mother to meet her daughter, but she was separated from her mother when she fled Syria to Germany in 2015, so she never had the chance to introduce her daughter.

“When you’re weak, you accept anything,” Shirine says.

“She was a guiding force in my life. She taught me how to love myself,” Shiline said of her mother.

To help with the grieving process, Sirine decided to offer Project December, an AI tool that simulates the dead.

Users fill out a form with information about the deceased, such as age, relationships, and quotes. OpenAI’s GPT2-powered AI chatbot creates a profile based on the information provided about the deceased.

For $!0 per hour, users can talk to an AI chatbot. The app has more than 3,000 users, most of whom used it to talk to loved ones who have passed away, said Jason Lawler, the app’s founder.

“Most people who use Project December for this purpose have this final conversation with their deceased loved one in a simulated format and then move on,” he said.

Sirine said the experience was “eerie” and strangely realistic. She said the chatbot called her by the nickname she entered in an online form and told her her mother was watching over her.

“There were moments where it felt so real. There were moments where I thought, could anyone answer like this?” she explained.

Shireen said she is a “spiritual person” and feels the chatbot is a “vehicle” to talk to her mother.

“My mom would say one word and I’d know if it was really me or if someone was just pretending to be me. I think there were moments like that.” she said.

Shireen said the app had helped her move forward, but warned that some users could become too attached to it, which could be “potentially dangerous”.

“It’s very convenient and very revolutionary. I was careful not to get too caught up in it,” she explained.

“I see people easily becoming addicted to its use, becoming disillusioned with it and wanting to believe in it to the point where it can get worse,” she added.

The app’s founder said he hasn’t seen people become “obsessed” with the app.

“So there are very few customers that keep coming back and keeping that person alive,” he explained.

British therapist Billy Dunleavy told Sky News that the app could complicate the natural grieving process.

“A big part of grief therapy is learning to accept absence, learning to recognize a new reality, a new normal…so this can disrupt that,” she said. .

“This vulnerability is combined with the potential to create a ghost version of a lost parent, a lost child, or a lost friend. , which can be extremely harmful to people in recovery,” she added.