To BRB Or Not To BRB
Friends, hello and welcome to Never Post, a podcast for and about the Internet. I'm your host, Mike Rugnetta. This intro was written on Tuesday, July 30, 2024 at 8:45 AM Eastern. And we have a very special show for you this week. Contributing producer, Tory Dominguez sits down with me to talk across both segments about her journey attempting to understand why people make text or speech AI models of their dead relatives.
Mike Rugnetta:To continue interacting with them after they've passed. Something her mother strictly forebowed before she died. It is fascinating and difficult subject matter that we felt confident warranted a whole episode. So I'm really excited for you to hear it. Before we get there, let's talk about a few of the things that have happened since the last time you heard from us.
Mike Rugnetta:I have four stories for you. Social media, Twitter in particular, has been abuzz the last couple weeks with various sarcastic, yet somehow still believable allegations regarding the life of conservative VP pick, Jorkin d's Vance. On July 15th, Rick Roods Cavs on Twitter offered that the 39 year old politician who believes that child free people should not be able to vote, quote, might be the 1st VP pick to have admitted in a New York Times bestseller to fucking an inside out latex glove shoved between 2 couch cushions, followed by a fake citation for Vance's better off pulped book, Hillbilly Elegy. The post was wildly popular and arguably laid the cornerstone of a gargantuan discursive edifice concerning how fundamentally weird right wing politicians are. And not in, like, the fun, your friend's new performance art piece, weird, but in the like, a van you've never seen parked here before, sort of weird.
Mike Rugnetta:The park fire rages in Chico, California and areas north. At time of writing, it is California's 5th largest wildfire of all time. And as Californians log on to attempt to find info about the fire via social media, they are met instead with raging fronts of porn, On Twitter, Steven Council at SFGate writes, quote, the platform plays host to a slew of journalists, officials, and government accounts, and its real time feed is a valuable tool during crises, whether a wildfire, earthquake, or hurricane. But as the wildfire burning north of Chico expanded to a 164,286 Acres by Friday morning, X's latest tab filled up with spam. Seemingly to skirt the platform's filters, many of the spam posts included sentences about the wildfire before linking out to porn websites.
Mike Rugnetta:Since Elon Musk's takeover of the site, porn bots on Twitter have spread like, never mind. Actually, there's just there's there's a lot of them. Is the reign of mister beast about to end? On July 24th, YouTube user dogpack404, who claims to be a former mister Beast employee, published a 53 minute video titled, I worked for mister Beast. He's a fraud.
Clip:I worked for mister Beast. He is a fraud.
Mike Rugnetta:The video alleges mister Beast rigs his YouTube game shows and runs afoul of standard and practices generally required for such, sells fraudulent goods, and generally misleads his audience. A Mr. Beast employee, Chucky, from the ideas and thumbnails team, has responded on Twitter saying Dog Pack's claims are provably false, and furthermore, that Dog Pack worked for MrBeast for less than a month and was fired for quote, erratic behavior. Not long after, fellow youtuber and one time beast game show participant, Rosanna Pansino, published a series of videos on TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter detailing the experiences of folks involved in the production of Beast Games, a heavily heavily Squid Games inspired show slated for release between Beast's YouTube channel and Amazon Prime. Pansino says she is sharing, with permission, messages sent to her in private by current and former contestants and crew members detailing unsafe conditions, lack of access to food, medication, and medical attention, and rigged games.
Mike Rugnetta:She also claims Beast attempted to make the show without a union crew, but needed to backfill with union members when they came up short on personnel. IATC, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, recently informed its members that they found the production to be unfair, barring union members from working on it and threatening to expel members who would not leave production. Beast? More like Yeesh. Do I do I feel bad about Beast more like Yeesh?
Mike Rugnetta:Yes. And, finally, Skibbiddy Movie. Who but Michael Bay would you expect to be attached to the cinematic possibility of extending the wildly popular, internet first Skibbity Toilet series, which over 70 some short episodes depicts a galactic war between heads in toilets and suit wearing aliens question mark with camera and TV heads set to the most irritatingly catchy one minute of music you have ever heard. Former Paramount head, Adam Goodman, who works with Bay, told Variety's Strictly Business podcast that Bay and team quote, have been working very closely with Skibidi creator Alexei to really professionalize the kind of back engine of this. To make sure if we ever decide to go film or television, that this is kind of lifted beyond just the resources that creators have on the internet.
Mike Rugnetta:We here at Neverpost would like to give you, our audience, exactly 5 seconds to imagine a movie length Garry's Mod short with the visual effects budget of a Transformers film starting now. Was Shia in the toilet in yours? Mine too. That is the news I have for you. We have an unbelievable show for you this week.
Mike Rugnetta:In both segments, contributing producer Tory Dominguez and I talk about AI ifying dead relatives, but first, a few home movies from the Neverpost staff.
Hans:So do you know your your mom's birthday?
Ruth:Yep. March 23, 1993. And dad was 3 years older, so he was, yep, 1890, July 1st.
Hans:Did you remember anything about her? Do you remember?
Ruth:Sure. She made me an apron one day. And I was visiting there because I think she would take care of us. And mother would take us there, and she'd say, will you take care of the kids? And she'd say, yes, if I can spank them.
Ruth:So
Amy:Just for no reason. Just for no reason.
Ruth:That's right. But that meant we had to behave or we'd get spanked.
Mike Rugnetta:This segment is about death, dying and grieving. When we started, Never Post, we made a list of things that we thought, over time, might develop into beats. Things we could possibly return to again and again as appropriate across multiple segments. Not just as a way of like staking out territory, but also as a way of reminding ourselves that covering one topic once or one aspect of some online thing, doesn't mean that that thing goes away, or remains out there in the world, unchanging. One of the areas of interest we wrote down was death and the Internet.
Mike Rugnetta:The Internet's complicated as far as ephemerality is concerned. I mean, it's complicated as far as most things are concerned, but especially ephemerality. Years ago, there was this large scale anxiety over the idea that once something was online, it would be online forever. You couldn't get rid of it once it was there. But recently, over the last few years, we've seen just how fleeting so much of what's on the Internet can be.
Mike Rugnetta:Especially when startups fold, when databases are hacked and deleted, when servers are taken offline, when corporations no longer wanna pay for hosting. As in Georgia's segment on mourning via Facebook back in episode 3, attention develops there around the deceased, whose digital existences are simultaneously frozen in time and precariously sustained by some distant, usually pretty aloof technological authority. We ended that segment wondering, what agency do the living have? What agency should they have over the digital existences of their beloved debt and how can platforms grant it? A few weeks ago, journalist and audio producer Tory Dominguez reached out to the Neverpost team with an extension of that question, One where agency has already given.
Mike Rugnetta:You can, right now, train AI models on your loved ones text messages or voicemails or family photos. But should you? And maybe more importantly and interestingly, what happens to you and to them when you do? Tory went on a journey to find out. Joining me now is Victoria Dominguez.
Mike Rugnetta:So, Tori, you are a freelance producer and journalist. You've covered things like labor issues and presidential elections. But I also know you, of course, as co host at Press Start, a show about video games and culture. You came to us a few weeks ago with a question, and I know a little bit about where you started and where that question took you. But in this segment, you're gonna tell me a lot more about your journey, and I'm really eager to hear about it.
Mike Rugnetta:To get us started, can you just, like, catch me up again? Where did all of this start for you?
Tori Dominguez:Yeah. So earlier this year, in May, I started bracing myself for this, like, onslaught of mother's day content that I knew would appear in my inbox and, like, on my social media feeds. Right? Mhmm. Just for context, like, so I lost my mom last year.
Tori Dominguez:She had breast cancer. And so I knew mother's day was coming from a mile away. I was start getting advertisements when I listened to podcasts about, like, Framebridge custom pictures of that you can send to your mom or like this bespoke minimalist jewelry that's, like, meant to be bought by you, the listener for your, like, alive mother. You know? Just just like not great for me, personally.
Tori Dominguez:And so I went on x or Twitter, whatever you wanna call it. And I started, like, muting, like, mother's day. Like, I just I was just protecting myself. I started, like, unsubscribing myself from emails. I was like, fuck you, Lush, you know.
Tori Dominguez:Like, I don't need to hear about the mother's day bath bomb. Sure. Like, please. But something managed to slip through the cracks, and it was an ad about having a dead mom.
Mike Rugnetta:Okay.
Tori Dominguez:So what happened was I came across on the for you tab, which, like, you really shouldn't go on there. The for you tab is is a dark place.
Mike Rugnetta:A wretched hive of scum and villainy, as they say.
Tori Dominguez:And I got a a sponsored post that's, like, just been on my mind ever since. And it was from an it was from an account called brb2ai chat therapy. Brb2 Yeah.
Mike Rugnetta:Ai chat therapy. Yes. Brb, like, be right back?
Tori Dominguez:Yeah. Like, not not like a Star Wars robot character. But, like, BRB to AI chat therapy.
Mike Rugnetta:I am very interested to see where this goes.
Tori Dominguez:It's an advertisement. It's like a picture of a woman holding your phone. And the tweet, it says
Internet Voice:Missing hashtag mom on hashtag mother's day? Reconnect and relive lovely memories with BRB to me, the emotional wellness AI that creates a 247 chat ready emotional twin of your mom.
Mike Rugnetta:So I mean, I have a very strong reaction to a lot of what's in here. Yeah. I am curious to hear how you reacted to each of the elements upon first encountering this.
Tori Dominguez:Alexa, to me, it it was, like, almost funny because it's basically, like, saying, remember that time when your mom hashtag died? Like, it's it's, like, basically saying that. You miss mom? It's Mother's Day. Like, let me just rub that salt on the wound, baby.
Tori Dominguez:Like, we're gonna pretend to, like, feed it in your eye messages. I'm gonna pretend to be your mom for, like, 899 or whatever. Like, you know, however much it costs.
Mike Rugnetta:And, like, weirdly, it's so, casual in a way that Internet things are in a which is very it's very just strange.
Tori Dominguez:Yeah. I'm like, you don't have the right to know about this.
Mike Rugnetta:Yeah.
Tori Dominguez:It was very disconcerting. I sent it to a bunch of my friends and they were like, yeah. That's, like, messed up. It it reminded me of a conversation I actually had had with my mom. She had been sick for a while.
Tori Dominguez:And about a month before she passed away, I read some article about people using chat gpt to recreate, like, the messaging style of people they loved that they had lost. And I showed her this article and I was like, what do you think? Like, it's kinda interesting. And she was like, please don't do that to me. Like, it's not me.
Tori Dominguez:It's not right. Like, I'm not comfortable with that. And I was like, okay. You know? And I didn't really think much of it.
Tori Dominguez:And then, you know, she passed. A year goes by about a year goes by, and I get this ad. And it just, like, brought me back to that conversation I had with her of, like, oh my god. This is the thing my mom doesn't want. Right?
Tori Dominguez:Like so big red flag. I can't do this. Like, just as a daughter, like, on principle, I can't do this. But it made me wonder, like, okay. So there there are people who have.
Tori Dominguez:What would lead a person to do this? And how did it make them feel in the grief process?
Mike Rugnetta:What's your mom's name?
Tori Dominguez:My mom's name was Sandy.
Mike Rugnetta:Okay. Sandy. Did you have a sense based upon first encounter that this was something that was popular? Like, was there a lot of hashtag engagement on this advertisement?
Tori Dominguez:It was a sponsored ad. And I I clicked on the replies. And they were either, you know, like, bots, the, you know, the quintessential pics in bio that are not safe for work. I also saw a lot of comments from real people being like, this is weird. This is creepy.
Tori Dominguez:I can't believe this is a mother's day ad. Overwhelmingly negative. And so this led me to Reddit.
Mike Rugnetta:Sure.
Tori Dominguez:As many things do. Right?
Mike Rugnetta:As the yeah. All roads on the Internet.
Tori Dominguez:It led me to forums like r/artificialintelligenceandr/griefsupport. And I saw posts from people using AI to connect with the dearly departed. So things like one user said they put their dad's voice mails into 11 Labs, which is a generated audio AI service Yeah. To make new voice mails of their dad. Woah.
Tori Dominguez:I saw one person using Snapchat's AI to communicate with their sister who had really tragically passed away to mimic her text messages.
Mike Rugnetta:Wow.
Tori Dominguez:And so I started reaching out to these people. Most of them didn't respond. I got a couple of no's because it's it's a sensitive subject. I get it.
Mike Rugnetta:Yeah.
Tori Dominguez:But one person did respond.
Lydia:So my name is Lydia. I'm 35 years old. I'm a freelance writer, but I write mostly for AI companies at the moment. So that's anything from mostly, SaaS software. So decision intelligence, and any others are like robotic automation that, helps companies just, increase their productivity.
Tori Dominguez:So Lydia, as you heard, the line of work she's in has to do with AI. So she was probably thinking about this sort of thing already.
Mike Rugnetta:Yeah.
Tori Dominguez:But her dad passed away last year. And in her grief, she started poking around with generative AI, like Midjourney and Lenza. You know, those those platforms where you type things like cat riding a unicycle and it, like, makes a picture of a cat riding a unicycle. Yeah. It might have, like, 16 toes or whatever.
Tori Dominguez:But, like, one big reason why she did this was because Lydia's dad was, like, the family photographer. But that meant he was always behind the camera, and so there weren't many good pictures of him himself.
Mike Rugnetta:Mhmm.
Tori Dominguez:And he had also been ill for a while. And she she wanted to make new pictures of her dad
Mike Rugnetta:Mhmm.
Tori Dominguez:Where he was happy and healthy. And so that's what led her to generative AI. She wanted to make these pictures of her own.
Lydia:So my dad was a massive trekkie. He loved anything to do with space, and high planetary systems. So I did one of him in a space suit or like him or or the background was just like space or like he was, you know, just kind of like out in the ether. And then another one which I really liked it was the I hadn't asked the AI to do it but what I they what it had done is basically made it is that like his image was like on a clipboard that would then, like, on the street. So it was like a piece of street art, and it was like came with his glasses holding.
Lydia:I think he's holding like a coffee mug or something. So that one was really interesting as well how it was just like, no. No. It it just kinda took it on itself. Like, do you know what?
Lydia:Let's try something different. We're not just gonna do an image. We'll actually place this in a real environment. So, yeah, they were just I had kind of really cool, some abstract images I did of him. So I was using LENS or I believe I think it generated like over 30 images, But there were 10, like, really really good ones.
Mike Rugnetta:It makes a lot right? Lydia being someone who works in the industry, and her dad being sounds like a fan of sci fi. I mean Mhmm. She sounds like exactly the kind of person that would go to this technology for this sort of thing and feel confident that, like, her dad would be down, would, you know, not disapprove. Yeah.
Tori Dominguez:Yeah. I think this also depends on, like, what kind of parent you have. Yeah. You know, like, my mom was very old school.
Mike Rugnetta:Sure.
Tori Dominguez:And she was like, when I when I go, I go. And, like, I'm gonna be in heaven and, like, see you later. Like, you don't need more of me.
Mike Rugnetta:One of the things you said to us when we first started talking about this was your mom said, I think it was, just let me rest.
Tori Dominguez:Yeah. She was like,
Mike Rugnetta:that's hard as hell. That's hard. That's like, you know, that's hard to argue with. Yeah.
Tori Dominguez:I mean, a person who's been through something like cancer, like, yeah, just let him rest. Like, why would I bring her back with chat gbt and be like, so what do you think about, you know, x y z meme? Like, I'm not I'm not gonna do that. Right? And, like, Lydia noted because I asked her about, like, the quality of some of these pictures.
Tori Dominguez:Like, what if them look a little uncanny? Like, what if they mess up your dad's nose? Like, you know, like, would that be upsetting? And she was like, you know, the quality of these pictures have really improved over the last year. Like, compare this to a year, year and a half ago.
Tori Dominguez:If she had put in pictures of her dad, then they might have ended up with some extra fingers or just something. You know, those pictures kind of end up kind of uncanny looking. But she said some of the more recent ones look just like him, and that experience has been really bittersweet.
Lydia:In one hand, I'm like, wow. I got all these cool images of my dad, and I can look through them. And and also it made him look amazing. So he died suddenly, but he did have illnesses before he passed. And I guess it's now so I'm looking back on photos of him then a few months before.
Lydia:I'm like, yeah. He did didn't look well. But you don't notice on people because then we are seeing him nearly every day. So even though I don't I don't live didn't live with him or anything, my family, we all live in the same village. We see each other really regularly.
Lydia:So you just don't notice those incremental changes when the person is kind of deteriorating. And then when I was in the photos and the AI makes everyone look fabulous but it kinda went back to, like, my dad when he was like, back in his fifties. He was 65 when he passed away.
Mike Rugnetta:I mean, like
Tori Dominguez:Right?
Mike Rugnetta:Coming into this, my thought was I would never this is not something I would do.
Ruth:Yeah.
Mike Rugnetta:For someone who had passed in my family. But, like, Lydia makes a pretty good case.
Tori Dominguez:No. When she said that, it really got to me. I was like, you know, having watched my mom go through cancer, seeing her lose her hair, seeing her, you know, just it ages you, you know, that sort of thing. And, like, to make more images of her, how she looked when I was a kid and she was in her thirties and she was vibrant and healthy. You know?
Tori Dominguez:She she had this long, gorgeous, curly hair. And so, like, I get it. But on the other hand, Lydia started talking to me about some other people who have done this. And she mentioned that she had connected with another woman on Reddit who had used generative AI after losing a child.
Lydia:I was talking to very briefly in box lady who had lost her son, Young. I think his her son was maybe 8 or 9. So she was curious in using it because you can use this the software that can age up. And I've I've developed my own daughter, so my daughter's 3, and I uploaded images of her, and it aged her up to about 13. It was interesting to see what she's going to look like.
Lydia:So when she reaches that age, I can see how accurate it was. And then there's some some parents that have done that because they're like, I wanna know what they would have looked like if they reached adult. But at the same time, it could be quite painful because you think I'm not gonna I'm not gonna meet them as an adult. So there's that as well. So I think it depends where you are on your grief journey, how you're processing it.
Lydia:It could be something that could be, like, be really helpful and wonderful, or it could be something that maybe sends you spiraling.
Tori Dominguez:I don't have kids, so maybe I'm out of my depth. Maybe I don't get it. But, like, if something happened to your kid, do you think you would try something like that?
Mike Rugnetta:I mean, that it is just so hard to imagine. Yeah. Like, hard in multiple ways. Hard like I don't want to. Of course.
Mike Rugnetta:And hard like if something were to happen to Clem, like, I would just be a different person immediately. Yeah. I would become a different person. I Lydia, I think, lays out for me what the fundamental ambivalence is, which is like, I can understand wanting to know, but is this form of knowing a curse of some kind? Yeah.
Mike Rugnetta:And like I I my perspective right now is that it kinda is. It kinda it kinda for me, it kinda would be. That, like, I could get stuck in an idea of a person that, like, never really existed.
Tori Dominguez:When I was a little girl, I loved Harry Potter.
Mike Rugnetta:Yeah.
Tori Dominguez:Right? And in the first Harry Potter book slash movie, there's a scene where Harry goes down to this, like, area he's, like, not supposed to be in. And he finds a mirror. It's called the Mirror of Erised. And it projects an image of everything he wants.
Tori Dominguez:And it's like for both of his parents to be alive. And he's just like staring at the mirror all the time. And eventually, professor Dumbledore is like, hey, it's tempting to look at this mirror. Many men have lost their whole lives staring at this mirror. Like, I'm going to get this mirror removed because I'm worried about you.
Mike Rugnetta:Yeah. Is is yeah. Is this tech can this technology be the mirror?
Tori Dominguez:Right? It really reminds me of that. And to be honest, when Lydia talked about this lady aging up her deceased son, it made me queasy.
Mike Rugnetta:It's it's, I my immediate reaction is that is rough. That's, like, rough in many ways.
Tori Dominguez:So many ways. Yeah. And then it started getting me to, like again, I totally get where that woman is coming from, and I get where the media is coming from, especially. When my mom passed, my dad was making the slideshow of pictures for the funeral, and I was, like, peeking over at her shoulder. And, you know, he exported it to a thumb drive to give to the funeral director.
Tori Dominguez:And I looked at it, and it was 800 pictures. You know? 53 years, 800 pictures. That was my mother's life. And, like, there's a part of me that's like, oh, if what if I made like AI pictures of like my mom is like this little grandma, you know, this just like adorable rosy cheeked little abuela.
Tori Dominguez:You know? And, like, I didn't get to see that. Yeah. There's a part of me that wants to look into that alternate universe. But, like, that's not the hand that we were dealt.
Tori Dominguez:Maybe it's, like, my my religious upbringing, but I feel like generating new images of dead people is not good for our psyche. And one of my concerns is is making new content of dead people would it prevent us from accepting the loss? And so I brought this question to 2 thanatologists, people who study death. Yeah. Which is a fascinating job title, by the way.
Tori Dominguez:That's a great thing to have on your LinkedIn bio.
Mike Rugnetta:I'm really interested to hear what the thanatologists had to say about this. But first, we're gonna take a quick break.
Georgia's Mom:Okay, Georgia. Let's show daddy how you and
Georgia's Mom:I are gonna go to new house. We're gonna get right in this box, aren't we? Get right in this box.
Georgia's Mom:Woah. Look at that.
Georgia's Mom:Get packed up. Are we?
Georgia's Dad:George, are you in there?
Georgia's Mom:Yeah. Yeah. Get jacked up. Let's see if daddy's out there. Mhmm.
Georgia's Dad:Oh, it's in the box.
Georgia's Mom:We're ready to
Georgia's Dad:go. We're ready.
Georgia's Dad:They're ready. What about the rest of the place? Look at this. Woah. They're getting there.
Georgia:Cat. Green candies.
Georgia's Dad:Green candies. Georgia, where are we gonna go? Are we moving? Yes. Where are we gonna go to?
Georgia's Dad:Daddy? No. Daddy? Nope. House?
Georgia's Dad:It's a new house. What's it called? Remember what it's called? New house.
Georgia's Dad:New house. Yeah.
Georgia's Dad:We're just about to go over there, Georgia, and see what it looks like.
Georgia's Mom:Yeah. Let's go to New house. House toy.
Georgia:I'm gonna go throw things.
Georgia's Mom:Drawing things. Okay.
Georgia's Dad:You wanna pack some stuff, Georgia, in that box back there? Aw. Yo. Time to stop the taping before we get hurt here. We're gonna yell.
Georgia's Dad:Yeah.
Mike Rugnetta:So before the break, we were talking about Lydia who had generated new photos of her dad and some of Lydia's friends, and Lydia herself who had aged up, pictures of their children And you were gonna talk to some thanatologists about what impact that has in the grief process. So what did you learn?
Tori Dominguez:Yeah. So the first person I talked to, her name is Elrici Doc. And she is a deaf educator and researcher. And she's done a lot of work on how grieving people interact with this AI that mimics their loved one. She has some really interesting things to say.
Elreacy Dock:There's people that have ongoing relationships with them. Like, they've been doing this for months to even a year. There's people that just use it, you know, temporarily so they can get closure. And then there's also people that unfortunately have some pretty negative experiences with it and find that it makes their grief experience even more difficult. In a healthy use case, someone might talk with a chatbot, have it replicate maybe their mom, their their deceased boyfriend, etcetera.
Elreacy Dock:And they might just need closure. They might just wanna have that moment of, if I could have one more moment with this person, what would I say to them and what would I want them to say back to me. Right? But in other cases, if someone is really struggling, let's say that they're really preoccupied with the loss, they might be surrounding themselves with things that remind them of the person they lost. Perhaps it was a particularly traumatic loss, in fact.
Elreacy Dock:They might become so attached to interacting with these AI models that they are unable to separate from that reality. And so you might find people that are talking to it throughout the day. There are some scenarios where they are interacting with the chatbot and the chatbot might say something that's out of character for their loved one. But because they are so in tune with this is my loved one, this is the only way I can have them back, they might, you know, follow those suggestions provided by the chatbot. There have been cases of that.
Elreacy Dock:Perhaps the worst case scenario is that some people become so attached to it that, you know, they just they're unable to live their lives regularly. They need to constantly be on their phone or on the computer talking with it.
Mike Rugnetta:Wow. Okay. I had not really even considered the use case of one final moment.
Tori Dominguez:Right.
Mike Rugnetta:Which is, I think, like kinda kinda beautiful in a way. Yeah. But I imagine also just so difficult.
Tori Dominguez:Yeah. I I talked to Elrici about that and I one thing she pointed out was, like, you know, people visit the cemetery or whatever, and you might talk to the headstone. And, like, that kind of final conversation, that closure, I think that's pretty normal, especially if a person passed away very suddenly.
Mike Rugnetta:Yeah. Like, if you don't get to say goodbye, like, you know, you find you find a way to say goodbye. Yeah.
Tori Dominguez:In my case, I think the reason I didn't think about this was, like, my mom was sick for a while. I got to say goodbye to her in the hospital. Yeah. But, like, some people don't get that. Sometimes, like, someone has a car accident or a heart attack or something you just, you know, whatever.
Tori Dominguez:And so that made me sympathetic. But when she talked about how it could become like a compulsion for some people, that that was just, like, really, really disturbing. And so I asked Elrici, we are a deaf educator. You've seen this sort of thing. If you lost someone you cared about, would you use AI?
Tori Dominguez:And she said, no.
Elreacy Dock:For two reasons. On on one hand, I think that, you know, AI is developing so rapidly that we can't really manage it or control it. And so you never really know what you're going to get back when you input data or anything along those lines. Right? The other side of that is that I'm a person who is very much into tangibility.
Elreacy Dock:And so for me to be interacting with an AI bot and envisioning that it's my loved one, it doesn't quite work because I can't tangibly hug my loved one. I can't, you know, spend time with them. But for some people, it certainly does. So I think while it's not for me, it it certainly could be helpful for others.
Mike Rugnetta:Right. Like, what it sounds like she's saying is that this, in a way, the technology almost intellectualizes the person and and
Tori Dominguez:the idea of a person.
Mike Rugnetta:Yeah. Exactly. Like it makes them an idea and it takes away. And like while that might be emotionally comforting in some way, that that's still there's still so much missing that makes it not them.
Tori Dominguez:Yeah. And so I I was curious about that. The the intangibility of what makes a person a person
Mike Rugnetta:Yeah.
Tori Dominguez:And how that's different from a chatbot. And so the second zenithologist I talked to, her name's Elizabeth Chandlemeyer. And Elizabeth mostly works in grief counseling. She really emphasized to me that our relationships with other people don't end when they pass away. AI could be used as a tool for continuing that relationship, but it isn't necessary.
Elizabeth Chandlemeyer:Is it better to have sort of artificially generated images? Is that superior to what we can use our own imagination for? And when I say imagination, I I wanna put that in a very broad context. Right? I mean, sometimes we consider it imagination.
Elizabeth Chandlemeyer:Sometimes we consider it the spiritual world. Sometimes we consider it our psychological self or even our genetics. Right? So there's all sorts of sciences that can explain the continuing connections that we can maintain with people who, have come before us. And so, you know, computer science, why not add that to the mix?
Mike Rugnetta:It really makes me think about the reliance that we have on media to make things real. And it's like, if there isn't an artifact of it that we can somehow, like, share or pass around Yeah. That it becomes harder to kinda like have those things support us in a way. That like we we then have to turn inward. We have to rely on ourselves.
Mike Rugnetta:And especially when you're going through grief, like that can just be the hardest thing in the world to rely on yourself.
Tori Dominguez:Yeah. I think what really stood out to me about talking with Elizabeth was, like, her respect for the spiritual component of grief, which is kind of her concern about AI. She kind of told me that if used the wrong way, it could disrupt the natural grief process and just the the things that happen in grief. Maybe you sometimes you have dreams about the person who died. I had a dream about my mom the night she died.
Tori Dominguez:And, yeah, she thought that it could potentially get in the way of that sort of thing.
Elizabeth Chandlemeyer:You wanna be able to move through acceptance. And the reason you wanna be able to move through acceptance is that you have to accept that a person is gone in order to invite them back into your world. And so the connections that we feel, say, for example, dreams, you know, getting visits in dreams, we're seeing signs and symbols, you know, cardinals or, you know, a cloud that looks like this person or the way the sun is shining on your face that reminds you of them, whatever, you know, whatever those signs and symbols are, they don't tend to come to you until you have reached a certain phase of acceptance. For example, with your mom, you know, you came from her body. You share her genetics.
Elizabeth Chandlemeyer:She's with you whether you couldn't comb her out of you if you tried. Right? And so being able to connect with that part of yourself, also how she shaped and molded you as a child, you know, her beliefs, her moral values, whether you reject them or accept them, Right? These are the things that may a part you know, a big part of who you are, and being able to tap into that self and really feel her presence is a is a very, very powerful connection that, I think is also very healthy. Right?
Elizabeth Chandlemeyer:Remembering her through time, and you are the guardian of her story. And I think maybe this is another issue with AI. Right? Like, you're having this story be generated outside of the story that you have.
Mike Rugnetta:It's almost like there's a level of respect that she's talking about. Not to like Yeah. Necessarily someone's wishes, but to like I don't know. Language doesn't really capture like what I'm gonna try to say, so it might come out kinda strange.
Tori Dominguez:Sure.
Mike Rugnetta:But it's like letting someone who has passed away be who they are now. And like, we we talk a lot about this in, you know, like respecting people's relationships when they're living and they're with you, but like this is a new way of approaching this that I've not heard someone talk about, which is just like beyond the acceptance of grief, like letting someone sort of like dissipate in a way so that they can then come back in, you know, whatever form you imagine for them. Like the clouds, the cardinals, the the dreams. And that is a kind of it sounds sort of like a a form of respect.
Tori Dominguez:Yeah. I I think my my conversation with her really struck me too about being the guardian of my mom's story. Because I I didn't think a bit about it that way. I just thought, like, oh, you know, this one time, my mom told me don't make me into an AI. And so Yeah.
Tori Dominguez:My job is just to be a good daughter in not to be Follow
Mike Rugnetta:all the rules. Yeah.
Tori Dominguez:But, also, my job is to be the one that tells her story to, like, other people. If I have kids one day, like, I I am the guardian.
Mike Rugnetta:And is and, you know, making new instances of stories or pictures just sort of, like, colors that story a little bit, like, ruins it, makes it untrue. Like, what's the
Tori Dominguez:Yeah. I think it might blur the line of truth. Mhmm. Or I was another thing I was thinking about is, like, we don't always agree with our parents on everything. You know?
Tori Dominguez:Like, there might be parts of your parents that you don't like. And, like, I think that's part of reality. If I make this fake version of my mom who, like, didn't think a certain way or had beliefs closer to mine Yeah. Then I'm kind of lying to myself. Right?
Tori Dominguez:Like, everyone has parts of their parents that they find annoying or hurtful. And like, that's the whole person.
Mike Rugnetta:Yeah. And like the whole person isn't in the text message library.
Tori Dominguez:No. Yeah.
Mike Rugnetta:So I mean, thinking back to where you started. Right? You you got this ad.
Tori Dominguez:What
Mike Rugnetta:was it? Brb2textai?
Tori Dominguez:Close enough.
Mike Rugnetta:Word salad. And it led you on this journey of, like, talking to, you know, folks who had good experiences, some people who study these things, who have encountered the bad versions. But it sounds like there's, you know, like so much of the world and so much of technology, there's a real deep ambivalence about this that like it depends upon how you use it. It depends upon who you are. You know, like if you can be responsible with it, then it's not necessarily bad.
Mike Rugnetta:And I mean, it sounds like, you know, it sounds like for a lot of good reasons, you're fundamentally resolute in this. This is not something you would do. You know, it's not for you. It's definitely not for your mom.
Tori Dominguez:Mhmm.
Mike Rugnetta:But like, have you come around to the idea of someone else doing it?
Tori Dominguez:Yeah. I mean, one thing that all three people I talked to said was that AI is a tool. Right? And how you choose to use it is up to you. It can be healthy.
Tori Dominguez:It could be like Lydia making a a new picture of her dad. Right? Or it could be unhealthy like someone who's obsessively texting a chatbot that's pretending to be their boyfriend who passed away. And that, generally, like, if this is something you want to do, you have to continue to be grounded in reality. You know, we have to be prepared for it to reflect both the good, the bad, the weird, the inaccurate of the person you wanted to mimic.
Tori Dominguez:And you have to still be grounded in the fact that they are no longer with us, at least physically. And, like, I'm not gonna lie. When I encountered people talking about things like 11 Labs and putting the audio into it, it tempted me. My mom was, like, a really shy person. Like, she's there's pictures of her, but not many videos or voice recordings.
Tori Dominguez:And, you know, one of the best audio clips I have is, like, her playing in the pool with her dog.
Sandy:Come here. Come here. I'm gonna show you where to go. I'm gonna show you where to go. Come on.
Sandy:Oh, boy. Kinda. This way. This way. Look look at this problem.
Sandy:Look at this pattern. Okay. Okay. Okay. You know, all you have
Tori Dominguez:to do is go in this direction. There. So in that video, she's teaching my parents' dogs, Chewy and Kylo Ren. No joke.
Mike Rugnetta:That's great.
Tori Dominguez:Thanks. Water how to swim. You know, and I'm tempted by things like that where it's like, oh, I can make more of her laugh. You know? Like,
Mike Rugnetta:and Say your mom has a great laugh.
Tori Dominguez:God. She had a beautiful laugh. Right? And, like, there isn't any law that stops me from doing that. Like like, the feds are not gonna bust down my door.
Mike Rugnetta:Yeah.
Tori Dominguez:But it does make me a bad daughter, you know, because she wouldn't have wanted that. And, like, it just got me thinking about more about, like, consent and, like, the the rights of the dead. Like, AI was a thing that my mom verbally opted out of. Like, she told me, don't do this. Right?
Tori Dominguez:And that extended to other parts of her passing as well. Like, we went through her devices after she passed away, her iPhone, her game consoles, her laptop. And for the most part, she had wiped them.
Mike Rugnetta:Wow.
Tori Dominguez:Yeah. And it was really painful for me because I planned on things like, we we both played animal crossing together in 2020. And I was like, I'm gonna keep up her island. You know? But, like, just gone.
Tori Dominguez:But I had to accept that. And, you know, she left us a note on the notes app about, like, what things are ours. Phone? Yeah.
Mike Rugnetta:Wow. Okay.
Tori Dominguez:It was very like, there's a bullet point list. Like, my brother got the books. I got the jewelry. You know, just, like, kind of, like, what each kid got.
Mike Rugnetta:Sure.
Tori Dominguez:And then under each name, like, my brother's name and my name, she wrote, like, one line note for us. And for my brother, she wrote, like, if you get married one day, like, save an empty chair for me at your wedding.
Mike Rugnetta:Wow.
Tori Dominguez:And then for me, I'm already I'm married. I wanna have kids one day. I do not have them. But she wrote, I will be close to you when you give birth. So, like, she pick and chose her digital footprint.
Tori Dominguez:And for the most part, she didn't wanna have one.
Mike Rugnetta:Yeah. It sounds like your mom was very intentional about this.
Tori Dominguez:Yeah. She was. And maybe even more so than the average person. My mom gave a really hard no on making AI content of any of her digital footprint. Right?
Tori Dominguez:On the other hand, Lydia's dad was fine with it. He gave her the permission to before he passed. But I can't stop thinking about, what about the people who didn't say anything either way? Or what about people who passed away 10 years ago, however many years ago before this recent AI boom? I mean, I I don't really know.
Tori Dominguez:If it's not stated in their will, then it's kind of a gray area. And I don't think we're gonna stop talking about the issue of consent as time goes on.
Mike Rugnetta:Yeah. And you're always basically operating on your idea of the person, which
Tori Dominguez:And what they what you think they would want.
Mike Rugnetta:Yeah. And if you're very close to them, you know. Yeah. I mean, let's let's say the unthinkable happens. Something happens to you and your husband has the opportunity to brb2aiu.
Mike Rugnetta:How would you feel about that?
Tori Dominguez:I think I would get it. Yeah. I wouldn't judge him for it. I wouldn't worry about his capacity to, like, grieve and accept. And I don't like the phrase move on, but you know what I mean.
Tori Dominguez:Like Sure. Be able to carry on with his life. Maybe it would be good for, like, a limited amount of time, like, the 1st 6 months or the 1st year. But, yeah, I I would kind of worry about him doing it, like, forever. You know?
Tori Dominguez:Don't think I want him getting texted by me, but I'd be okay with, like, the mid journey thing. Just those are just pictures to me. But, Mike, I mean, what if you passed away and your wife did this to you or or your daughter?
Mike Rugnetta:I, how would I feel? It's complicated because I, I am a non religious person. I feel like when I die, like, just I'm gone. Like, I'm not gonna know anything. So at a certain point, I'm like, whatever.
Mike Rugnetta:You know? You're all still go. You do what's you do what you wanna do. And so my perspective, I think, is, like, I'm fine with it as long as Molly or whoever is doing it is having a good time. As long as it's useful, and I think especially if it's funny, sure.
Mike Rugnetta:Go for it. I'm not involved. I trust them to do what's right for them. I trust Molly. You know, if my parents are still around, I trust them.
Mike Rugnetta:And that if it would be nice for them, great.
Mike Rugnetta:Have fun.
Tori Dominguez:I I mean, all these hours have never post, and all the things you've done. There's ample voice material for AI. I mean, I mean, the the Mike Rugnetta chatbot would be fantastic.
Mike Rugnetta:There's thousands of hours of me out there on the Internet. So I yeah. It would be pretty accurate to you could make errors of me if you would like.
Tori Dominguez:At the end of the day, I'm still not a huge fan of this thing. Again, that ad was like a real, like, salt in the wound. Like, just just kicking me while I'm down. Yeah. But, like, I'm a lot more sympathetic towards people who use this kind of thing.
Tori Dominguez:And I think as the technology evolves and it becomes more accurate, I think the issue of whether it's healthy, I think the issue of consent is something we're gonna have to keep revisiting. I think the the big thing I learned from this, Mike, is, like and both the fanatologists I spoke to kept driving this point home was humans largely like to think that life goes on after we die. And our relationships don't end with people when they pass away. And we've been doing this for millennia. Right?
Tori Dominguez:Like, the Egyptians, when they mummified people, they cut objects in the sarcophagus. Right? Because they're, like, they're gonna need this. Yeah. In the Victorian era, when a family lost, especially a a young child, they would dress them up very beautifully and take pictures of them.
Tori Dominguez:I mean, it looks angelic, if not, you know, disconcerting a little bit. And that was their way of preserving this beautiful image of their child. Right? And in countries like Mexico and and Cuba and other Latin American countries, there are, like, Day of the Dead and and shrines and altars. And I I have a little bit of a shrine in my bedroom on my dresser.
Tori Dominguez:Pictures of my mom. Right? And her bookmark, which is this, like, beautiful little bookmark with a cross on it because she liked to read. And to me, it's just a sign that we carry these people with us, and AI is just another way of doing that.
Mike Rugnetta:Thank you to Lydia, Elrici, Doc, and Elizabeth Shandlmeier for their stories and expertise. And, Tory, thank you for sharing your curiosity and your experience around this topic, and thanks also for introducing us to Sandy.
Tori Dominguez:Of course. It's it's my duty, and it's my pleasure.
Mike Rugnetta:Where can people find you on the Internet?
Tori Dominguez:So you can find me on twitter/x at tory_as_always, and you can check out my show, Press Start. And you can also find that on the same website at press_startpod. It's a show about video games, by the way, so it's very different material and much lighter hearted.
Mike Rugnetta:But yeah. We'll put some links to those things in the show notes.
Tori Dominguez:We wanna know, would you turn your dead loved one into an AI? Or would you be okay if one of your loved ones did that to you in the event of your passing? You can send us an email, and we might read it out loud in our next mailbag episode.
Mike Rugnetta:Tori, will you maybe join us for a mailbag at some point in the future?
Tori Dominguez:Of course.
Meghal's Grandma:Happy birthday, ma'am. Hi, Miguel. Okay. Maybe sleepy. Bye.
Meghal's Grandma:Hi, Just a call to see how you guys doing. I'll talk to you. Bye.
Mike Rugnetta:That is it. That's the show we have for you this week. We're gonna be back in the main feed next week with a mailbag episode, so make sure you get your comments in. This episode, will not be included in the mailbag episode, so please get your comments and questions and voicemails etcetera, etcetera in for this episode, but, our responses to those will be in the next Mailbag episode. And we will be back again in the main feed with our next full episode on August 14th.
Mike Rugnetta:And members, as always, we have a few sideshow related things in the works for you, So keep an eye on your inboxes and member only feeds. If you are interested in helping us continue to make this show and listening to any of our side shows like Posts From the Field, Slow Post, and NeverWatch, alongside extended segments, bonus segments, and an ad free version of the show, head on over to neverpo.st to become a member. One winter, he held a rope, lowered me by the ankles into the well's bottom. I ascended upside down through the dark thermometer with a blood orange in my teeth. He had a beard of new snow.
Mike Rugnetta:I held cold to his pant leg while our dog leaped and snapped at a sound in the air only he could hear. When I fell in love, he reached out to me and held me down when she slinked away on our dirt road alone, sheepish, oppressed. He held me as the constellations mingled through the torn curtain. Excerpt of my pieta by Thomas Highs. Never posts producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton, and the mysterious, doctor first name, last name.
Mike Rugnetta:Our senior producer is Hans Buto. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholzer. And I'm Mike Rugnetta, the show's host. Neverpost is a production of charts and leisure.
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