In the 1960s, Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke coined a useful adage: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” He was right, as evidenced by the almost mystical reverence with which people tend to describe artificial intelligence tools such as Chatgpt. We know it is only software. We even understand how the program works. But because it is so advanced that it feels amazing, like this know I, we treat it with veneration and a little fear, as if it were a God and not a creation.
And, more and more, we turn to ai to answer the type of questions and fulfill the types of desires that religion once resolved. That is the topic of the new documentary “Eternal you” (available on demand and directed by Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck).
As the title suggests, “Eternal You” is mainly concerned with a very particular use of ai: giving users the illusion of speaking with their loved ones dead. Large language models trained in speech patterns of the deceased can be made, the chat records and more to imitate the way of communicating so well of that person who feels for pain as if they were crossing the border between life and the death. These tools can be comforting, but they are also potentially large companies. One of the subjects of the film is called “Death Capitalism.”
I saw for the first time “Eternal You” a year ago during his career at the Festival, and when I saw him again, I was surprised to realize how much he has changed in those 12 short months. We have learned, or simply at the height of ai, to the friends of ai and the partners of ai. Our food on social networks are now flooded with “people” who are not people at all, and target <a target="_blank" class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/3/24334946/meta-ai-profiles-instagram–facebook-bots” title=”” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>announced plans to create them systematically on their own platforms. The idea that there was a lot of money that was made by letting us chat with an imitation of a dead person felt a little stripes a year ago, but I am quite sure that I was now wrong.
The subjects of “Eternal You” range from the afflicted to the skeptic and the software creators. Some people like experience; Others find it deeply disturbing. But the most interesting are the questions that encourage the documentary: not if it is ethical to try to talk to the dead, but if it is ethical that a software company sells that “ability.” As Sherry Turkle, the eminent sociologist, he points out in the movie, ai is a “brilliant device that knows how to deceive you to think there is a there there.”
“Eternal You” is not really about overcoming death, as a result. In a broad and somewhat divontal way, it is about the despair of humans for finding meaning in life where they can and how companies hurry to fill that void and inspire almost religious devotion, even in professionals who make the tools. But it also feels like a warning: that is not your loved one at the other extreme, and it is not magic either.
(Tagstotranslate) Documentaries and programs
