All that work, all that talent, all that outstanding brain and computing power and this is being used to give the world nothing more than a perfected, more ugly version that the old gypsy witch used to pull, cold reading drawing the most unbelievable insights about a person from the slightest of his actions or circumstances around him.
Eternal You is a film lasting over 100 minutes, exploring the dark and viscous waters of the digital death industry. For those of you (and me too till I watched this fascinating, brain disturbing, mind folding film), there are companies who are trying to AI and construct face of a dead person in a way that it would seem realistic. Almost all the known history of mankind as posted on the internet is squeezed, together with the traces left by the dead and the information which the relatives are willing to provide and for a small fee, they can talk to the dead again.
Joshua Barbeau is a regular user of one such company, Project December. Through this service, he communicates with his fiancée, Jessica, who had to be removed from a life-support machine and was in his arms while taking her last breath. Another user of the service is Christi Angel, she talks with her dear partner Cameroun, whose last message, unfortunately, was only sent moments before he lost consciousness and hasn’t waked up ever since. Stephenie Oney is registered on HereAfter.ai and her family participates in a voice-simulation with her deceased father Bill, and she thinks talking to his grandchildren would be better than showing them photographs or family videos.
Throughout the narrative, various voices emerge, including supporters and opponents of the current trajectory of the travel AI. Eternal You is directed by Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck in a tightly composed and gracefully complex manner seeking to understand the users and the creators, the money factor, and what are, in general, the individual and the social positives and negatives. It addresses the obligations of creators and lawmakers to shield us from this digital construct and limit its scope rather than explore all potentials of such a construct and whether faith in humankind’s past should be enough to warrant this approach.
And yet it is difficult to walk away from the whole thing without feeling a sense of revulsion. It is simply impossible not to observe the overarching perspective of humanity brought about by criticism such as that of Sherry Turkle and Carl Öhman in sharp contrast to the casual attitude of tech bros and others responsible for development of the technology. With special mention going to the founder of Project December, Jason Rohrer, whose wife had the idea before he did but didn’t tell him because, he laughs: “She thought it shouldn’t be done, or something.”
Rohrer, when laughing, also manages to be dismissive over Angel’s distress caused by AI Cameroun’s declaration that he is in hell. “I’ve got some bad news for her in my opinion … her whole belief system [Christianity] is flawed.” It is self evident that Rohrer is not in that particular business of preventing people from being duped, somewhat altruistically: “Not that’s a great experience.” And, hung around like a bad smell, is the idea that it’s what people pay for.
Most of the people we interviewed lost a loved one in a very brutal manner, thus making them part of the most at risk from an already high risk group. Perhaps none more so than Jang Ji-sung whose daughter Nayeon was only seven when she died. “I remembered her maternal instincts kick in as my daughter just told her that kicking the bed is bad. She didn’t know it was because of pain.” “I couldn’t find the strength to say goodbye.” In making it real, a virtual reality company places her daughter in front of her in the form of a speaking, visible image that she views through a VR headset. The documentary Meeting You features this pairing on Korean television. It is astonishing to witness, even in photographs, the helplessness of a mother as she repeatedly reaches out to an invisible child. One perspective reveals that the producers are looking for angles in order to pick the right music for the footage while being annoyed that Jang’s expression was too “dismal”. Later, Jang said that her sense of guilt decreased slightly. And that Nayeon never appears in her dreams anymore.
You may feel that Eternal You deals with numerous places and contexts. Looking at it from one perspective, it’s about cutting edge invention, intelligent individuals, practical and legal dilemmas, the advantages and disadvantages of latent capitalism. On the contrary, and even for those with a naturally lower luddite proclivity than myself, it is about the continued and centuries old exploitation of the needy and the vulnerable by the selfish, the heartless or the indifferent. It is also, however, about the revealing of a chasm filled with horrors presented as solutions to insatiable yearnings which some will leap into willingly, some will hurl and most finally all the rest of mankind will be pulled over its edge, kicking and screaming but without an alternative. It is about the end of elegance, the end it may be of the reason for living itself.
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