Ai technology has had quite the push in the last 5 years. In addition to the rise of applications like ChatGPT and Dall-e, the digital afterlife industry has taken a front seat in Ai technologies. Eternal You is a documentary from Hans Block and Mortiz Riesewieck that explores the Afterlife industry and the ethical implications it poses.
Grief is an emotion that ever human being has to experience at some point in their life. The argument for Afterlife Ai is to help lesson the burden of this grief. But does it do more harm than good? Eternal You takes an objective look at the Ai Afterlife industry speaking to both CEOs and clients of Ai products to help the viewer answer this question.
Over the course of the documentary we see all types of technology including text chatbots that mimic your loved ones, voice simulated interactions, to full VR recreations. We hear from the CEOs of these companies on what they are trying to create and their sense of responsibility (or lack thereof) in creating such a technology.
Additionally, Enteral You also sits with customers of such technology. We get to witnesses the interaction of two different people using a chatbot to simulate their dead partners. This type of demonstration goes a long way in the viewer assessing whether or not this could be detrimental to the mental health of someone, or help them significantly.
There are so many alarming parts to this type of technology as well as much potential for good. It appears that some of the CEOs don’t completely understand how their Ai is learning. This poses the question to whether or not they are carrying enough responsibility in releasing this technology into the world. The amount of personal data a company would have to have to create such an effective program brings into questions privacy ethics. Who owns this data, also do the companies keep a copy? These are all questions you will be asking yourself after watching this documentary.
Still to piggyback on what a professor at MIT mentioned in the documentary, if this could be used to help move through grief effectively there is potential. But it is important that people can move on versus pretending their loved ones are still here.
Eternal You does a good job at giving the audience a peek into all these industries while bringing up the ethical questions surrounding it.
Credits
- DIRECTOR(S)HANS BLOCK MORITZ RIESEWIECK
- PRODUCERSCHRISTIAN BEETZGEORG TSCHURTSCHENTHALER
- EXECUTIVE PRODUCERSKATHRIN ISBERNERANNA GODASOLI HARBOTTLECHRISTOPHER CLEMENTSJULIE GOLDMANJENNY RASKINKELSEY KOENIGLIZZIE FOXDAVIS GUGGENHEIM
- CO-EXECUTIVE PRODUCERMERYL METNI
- CO-PRODUCERPATRICK M. MÜLLER
- EDITINGANNE JÜNEMANNLISA ZOE GERETSCHLÄGER
- DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHYTOM BERGMANNKONRAD WALDMANN
- MUSICGREGOR KEIENBURGRAFFAEL SEYFRIED
- YEAR2023
- CATEGORYFEATURE
- COUNTRYGERMANY/UNITED STATES
- LANGUAGEENGLISH, KOREAN
- RUN TIME87 MIN
