Digital Afterlife: Hollywood and AI Tech

Artificial intelligence is changing the way we live, connect, and grieve but will digital immortality allow us to live forever? Digital immortality refers to uploading, storing, or transferring a person’s personality into a digital entity or cyberspace, or a computer. As the technology of digital immortality becomes more popular and available, people will find new ways of using AI-generated digital personas.

Our identity has already shifted from the photograph to online social networks and is increasingly moving towards AI technology. And this is where the real revolution begins, in AI and its ability to represent who we are because it is designed to replicate and converse with us. And the emergence of AI in the genealogy of portraiture is driven in part by our insatiable appetite to remain connected with our dead loved ones.

Death and bereavement are driving new ways to communicate with the deceased to give us digital immortality. As artificial intelligence grows in popularity, consumers can animate still photographs, create virtual living worlds or maintain ongoing interaction with the dead via a chatbot application.

How companies like StoryFile are disrupting the death tech industry.

HTTP://www.gliumedia.com

[email protected]

@gingerliu

gingerliu.com

gliuphoto.com

https://gingerliu.substack.com/

AI image generators like Dalle are rightfully raising concerns from artists about creative ownership. AI generators are trained on millions of photos and learn to identify things from existing photos. Some of Dalle’s images are machine-made with the user only contributing text prompts, so it’s not copyrightable at all, according to Wired. Remember the monkey selfie copyright case? These images are more likely to be public domain and not owned by anyone, and therefore, free to use. More user input, like editing, could lead to human-made authorship and would be eligible for copyright. But do commercial technology companies own the copyright of the images users manipulate on their platforms? Look at the small print because laws are changing fast.

  HTTP://www.gliumedia.com

[email protected]

https://gingerliu.substack.com/

@gingerliu

Artificial intelligence has caught the zeitgeist of the 21st century. AI is no longer a fantasy concept exchanged by scientists and researchers predicting an uncertain time in the future. In the second decade of the century, AI is as omnipresent as it is mundane. Take the healthcare industry. AI has seamlessly integrated into workflow and systems to focus on patients and on providing more person-centered care that previous bureaucracy, technology, and organizational structure have grappled with. Is it too good to be true? I also discuss my personal experience with dementia and how AI is helping with early detection.

HTTP://www.gliumedia.com

[email protected]

https://gingerliu.substack.com/

@gingerliu

In the past weeks, two influential women of a similar age died. One was the most famous woman in the world and the other was my aunt. Queen Elizabeth’s death at 96 on the 8th of September was followed by ten days of national mourning in the UK.

In the 21st century, grieving practices have evolved again to incorporate past cultural practices which are equally driven by technology, society, and the human condition.

Who are the providers of grief technology that bridge the gap between the living and the dead? Victorian portrait photographers and AI engineers. The human condition is in how we grieve and do business.

HTTP://www.gliumedia.com

[email protected]

https://gingerliu.substack.com/

@gingerliu