The link between Victorian portraiture and AI death tech.

Looking at AI death tech platforms in context with Victorian post-mortem photography and attaining the sitter’s essence in portraiture, we can see a link between technology, consumerism, and society’s view on death and bereavement.

Startups working in the death tech or grief tech industry have designed different approaches that enable users to communicate with the dead, via text, video, audio, or photorealist avatars. The technology represents a recent shift from photography to artificial intelligence (AI) as a tool for remembering the deceased.

Ginger Liu is the founder of Ginger Media & Entertainment, a Ph.D. Researcher in artificial intelligence and visual arts media — specifically death tech, digital afterlife, AI death and grief practices, AI photography, entertainment, security, and policy, and an author, writer, artist photographer, and filmmaker. Listen to the Podcast — The Digital Afterlife of Grief.

Ginger Liu is a writer who covers the latest developments in artificial intelligence, entertainment, and art.