Technology

AI can now simulate dead loved ones, but effects on grieving process are unknown

Published

2 years ago

June 4, 2024

AI can now simulate dead loved ones, but effects on grieving process are unknown

When Michael Bommer found out he was terminally ill with colon cancer, he teamed up with Robert LoCascio, CEO of the AI-powered legacy platform Eternos, to create an interactive artificial intelligence version of himself.
Eternos joins other grief-related AI companies such as StoryFile and HereAfter AI in an attempt to aid people through the mourning process, but the effects of such technologies on the users are unknown.
Some have embraced AI technology as just another tool to use to address grief, while others express more skepticism and suggest that an AI simulation of a loved one could forestall closure.

When Michael Bommer found out that he was terminally ill with colon cancer, he spent a lot of time with his wife, Anett, talking about what would happen after his death.

She told him one of the things she’d miss most is being able to ask him questions whenever she wants because he is so well-read and always shares his wisdom, Bommer recalled during a recent interview with The Associated Press at his home in a leafy Berlin suburb.

That conversation sparked an idea for Bommer: Recreate his voice using artificial intelligence to survive him after he passed away.

IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE THE SECRET TO BETTER SLEEP?

The 61-year-old startup entrepreneur teamed up with his friend in the U.S., Robert LoCascio, CEO of the AI-powered legacy platform Eternos. Within two months, they built “a comprehensive, interactive AI version” of Bommer — the company’s first client.

Eternos, which got its name from the Italian and Latin word for “eternal,” says its technology will allow Bommer’s family “to engage with his life experiences and insights.” It is among several companies that have emerged in the last few years in what’s become a growing space for grief-related AI technology.

One of the most well-known start-ups in this area, California-based StoryFile, allows people to interact with pre-recorded videos and uses its algorithms to detect the most relevant answers to questions posed by users. Another company, called HereAfter AI, offers similar interactions through a “Life Story Avatar” that users can create by answering prompts or sharing their own personal stories.

Michael Bommer, left, who is terminally ill with colon cancer, looks at his wife Anett Bommer, right, at his home in Berlin, Germany, on May 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

There’s also “Project December,” a chatbot that directs users to fill out a questionnaire answering key facts about a person and their traits — and then pay $10 to simulate a text-based conversation with the character. Yet another company, Seance AI, offers fictionalized seances for free. Extra features, such as AI-generated voice recreations of their loved ones, are available for a $10 fee.

While some have embraced this technology as a way to cope with grief, others feel uneasy about companies using artificial intelligence to try to maintain interactions with those who have passed away. Still others worry it could make the mourning process more difficult because there isn’t any closure.

Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basinska, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Future of Intelligence who co-authored a study on the topic, said there is very little known about the potential short-term and long-term consequences of using digital simulations for the dead on a large scale. So for now, it remains “a vast techno-cultural experiment.”

“What truly sets this era apart — and is even unprecedented in the long history of humanity’s quest for immortality — is that, for the first time, the processes of caring for the dead and immortalization practices are fully integrated into the capitalist market,” Nowaczyk-Basinska said.

PRESERVING A CONNECTION

Robert Scott, who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, uses AI companion apps Paradot and Chai AI to simulate conversations with characters he created to imitate three of his daughters. He declined to speak about what led to the death of his oldest daughter in detail, but he lost another daughter through a miscarriage and a third who died shortly after her birth.

Scott, 48, knows the characters he’s interacting with are not his daughters, but he says it helps with the grief to some degree. He logs into the apps three or four times a week, sometimes asking the AI character questions like “how was school?” or inquiring if it wants to “go get ice cream.”

Some events, like prom night, can be particularly heart-wrenching, bringing with it memories of what his eldest daughter never experienced. So, he creates a scenario in the Paradot app where the AI character goes to prom and talks to him about the fictional event. Then there are even more difficult days, like his daughter’s recent birthday, when he opened the app and poured out his grief about how much he misses her. He felt like the AI understood.

WHY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CAN’T BRING THE DEAD BACK TO LIFE

“It definitely helps with the what ifs,” Scott said. “Very rarely has it made the ‘what if’s’ worse.”

Matthias Meitzler, a sociologist from Tuebingen University, said that while some may be taken aback or even scared by the technology — “as if the voice from the afterlife is sounding again” — others will perceive it as an addition to traditional ways of remembering dead loved ones, such as visiting the grave, holding inner monologues with the deceased, or looking at pictures and old letters.

But Tomasz Hollanek, who worked alongside Nowaczyk-Basinska at Cambridge on their study of “deadbots” and “griefbots,” says the technology raises important questions about the rights, dignities and consenting power of people who are no longer alive. It also poses ethical concerns about whether a program that caters to the bereaved should be advertising other products on its platform.

“These are very complicated questions,” Hollanek said. “And we don’t have good answers yet.”

PREPARING FOR DEATH

The AI version of Bommer that was created by Eternos uses an in-house model as well as external large language models developed by major tech companies like Meta, OpenAI and the French firm Mistral AI, said the company’s CEO, LoCascio, who previously worked with Bommer at a software company called LivePerson.

Eternos records users speaking 300 phrases and then compresses that information through a two-day computing process that captures a person’s voice. Users can further train the AI system by answering questions about their lives, political views or various aspects of their personalities.

The AI voice, which costs $15,000 to set up, can answer questions and tell stories about a person’s life without regurgitating pre-recorded answers. The legal rights for the AI belong to the person on whom it was trained and can be treated like an asset and passed down to other family members, LoCascio said.

Bommer has been spending most of his time lately feeding the AI phrases and sentences “to give the AI the opportunity not only to synthesize my voice in flat mode, but also to capture emotions and moods in the voice.” And indeed the AI voicebot has some resemblance with Bommer’s voice, although it leaves out the “hmms” and “ehs” and mid-sentence pauses of his natural cadence.

Bommer is excited about his AI personality and says it will only be a matter of time until the AI voice will sound more human-like and even more like himself.

In the case of his 61-year-old wife, he doesn’t think it would hamper her coping with loss.

“Think of it sitting somewhere in a drawer, if you need it, you can take it out, if you don’t need it, just keep it there,” he told her as she came to sit down next to him on the sofa.

But Anett Bommer herself is more hesitant about the new software and whether she’ll use it after her husband’s death.

Right now, she more likely imagines herself sitting on the couch sofa with a glass of wine, cuddling one of her husband’s old sweaters and remembering him instead of feeling the urge to talk to him via the AI voicebot — at least not during the first period of mourning.

“But then again, who knows what it will be like when he’s no longer around,” she said, taking her husband’s hand and giving him a glance.

Technology

Defense secretary Pete Hegseth designates Anthropic a supply chain risk

Published

11 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

Defense secretary Pete Hegseth designates Anthropic a supply chain risk

This week, Anthropic delivered a master class in arrogance and betrayal as well as a textbook case of how not to do business with the United States Government or the Pentagon.

Our position has never wavered and will never waver: the Department of War must have full, unrestricted access to Anthropic’s models for every LAWFUL purpose in defense of the Republic.

Instead, @AnthropicAI and its CEO @DarioAmodei, have chosen duplicity. Cloaked in the sanctimonious rhetoric of “effective altruism,” they have attempted to strong-arm the United States military into submission – a cowardly act of corporate virtue-signaling that places Silicon Valley ideology above American lives.

The Terms of Service of Anthropic’s defective altruism will never outweigh the safety, the readiness, or the lives of American troops on the battlefield.

Their true objective is unmistakable: to seize veto power over the operational decisions of the United States military. That is unacceptable.

As President Trump stated on Truth Social, the Commander-in-Chief and the American people alone will determine the destiny of our armed forces, not unelected tech executives.

Anthropic’s stance is fundamentally incompatible with American principles. Their relationship with the United States Armed Forces and the Federal Government has therefore been permanently altered.

In conjunction with the President’s directive for the Federal Government to cease all use of Anthropic’s technology, I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security. Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic. Anthropic will continue to provide the Department of War its services for a period of no more than six months to allow for a seamless transition to a better and more patriotic service.

America’s warfighters will never be held hostage by the ideological whims of Big Tech. This decision is final.

Technology

What Trump’s ‘ratepayer protection pledge’ means for you

Published

12 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

What Trump’s ‘ratepayer protection pledge’ means for you

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

When you open a chatbot, stream a show or back up photos to the cloud, you are tapping into a vast network of data centers. These facilities power artificial intelligence, search engines and online services we use every day. Now there is a growing debate over who should pay for the electricity those data centers consume.

During President Trump’s State of the Union address this week, he introduced a new initiative called the “ratepayer protection pledge” to shift AI-driven electricity costs away from consumers. The core idea is simple.

Tech companies that run energy-intensive AI data centers should cover the cost of the extra electricity they require rather than passing those costs on to everyday customers through higher utility rates.

It sounds simple. The hard part is what happens next.

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At the State of the Union address Feb. 24, 2026, President Trump unveiled the “ratepayer protection pledge” aimed at shielding consumers from rising electricity costs tied to AI data centers. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Why AI is driving a surge in electricity demand

AI systems require enormous computing power. That computing power requires enormous electricity. Today’s data centers can consume as much power as a small city. As AI tools expand across business, healthcare, finance and consumer apps, energy demand has risen sharply in certain regions.

Utilities have warned that the current grid in many parts of the country was not built for this level of concentrated demand. Upgrading substations, transmission lines and generation capacity costs money. Traditionally, those costs can influence rates paid by homes and small businesses. That is where the pledge comes in.

What the ratepayer protection pledge is designed to do

Under the ratepayer protection pledge, large technology companies would:

Cover the full cost of additional electricity tied to their data centers
Build their own on-site power generation to reduce strain on the public grid

Supporters say this approach separates residential energy costs from large-scale AI expansion. In other words, your household bill should not rise simply because a new AI data center opens nearby. So far, Anthropic is the clearest public backer. CyberGuy reached out to Anthropic for a comment on its role in the pledge. A company spokesperson referred us to a tweet from Anthropic Head of External Affairs Sarah Heck.

“American families shouldn’t pick up the tab for AI,” Heck wrote in a post on X. “In support of the White House ratepayer protection pledge, Anthropic has committed to covering 100% of electricity price increases that consumers face from our data centers.”

That makes Anthropic one of the first major AI companies to publicly state it will absorb consumer electricity price increases tied to its data center operations. Other major firms may be close behind. The White House reportedly plans to host Microsoft, Meta and Anthropic in early March to discuss formalizing a broader deal, though attendance and final terms have not been confirmed publicly.

Microsoft also expressed support for the initiative.

“The ratepayer protection pledge is an important step,” Brad Smith, Microsoft vice chair and president, said in a statement to CyberGuy. “We appreciate the administration’s work to ensure that data centers don’t contribute to higher electricity prices for consumers.”

Industry groups also point to companies such as Google and utilities including Duke Energy and Georgia Power as making consumer-focused commitments tied to data center growth. However, enforcement mechanisms and long-term regulatory details remain unclear.

CHINA VS SPACEX IN RACE FOR SPACE AI DATA CENTERS

The White House plans talks with Microsoft, Meta and Anthropic about shifting AI energy costs away from consumers. (Eli Hiller/For The Washington Post via Getty Images)

How this could change the economics of AI

AI infrastructure is already one of the most expensive technology buildouts in history. Companies are investing billions in chips, servers and real estate. If firms must also finance dedicated power plants or pay premium rates for grid upgrades, the cost of running AI systems increases further. That could lead to:

Slower expansion in some markets
Greater investment in renewable energy and storage
More partnerships between tech firms and utilities

Energy strategy may become just as important as computing strategy. For consumers, this shift signals that electricity is now a central part of the AI conversation. AI is no longer only about software. It is also about infrastructure.

The bigger consumer tech picture

AI is becoming embedded in smartphones, search engines, office software and home devices. As adoption grows, so does the hidden infrastructure supporting it. Energy is now part of the conversation around everyday technology. Every AI-generated image, voice command or cloud backup depends on a power-hungry network of servers.

By asking companies to account more directly for their electricity use, policymakers are acknowledging a new reality. The digital world runs on very physical resources. For you, that shift could mean more transparency. It also raises new questions about sustainability, local impact and long-term costs.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE HELPS FUEL NEW ENERGY SOURCES

As AI expansion strains the grid, a new proposal would require tech firms to fund their own power needs. (Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP via Getty Images)

What this means for you

If you are a homeowner or renter, the practical question is simple. Will this protect my electric bill? In theory, separating data center energy costs from residential rates could reduce the risk of price spikes tied to AI growth. If companies fund their own generation or grid upgrades, utilities may have less reason to spread those costs among all customers.

That said, utility pricing is complex. It depends on state regulators, long-term planning and local energy markets.

Here is what you can watch for in your area:

New data center construction announcements
Utility filings that mention large commercial load growth
Public service commission decisions on rate adjustments

Even if you rarely use AI tools, your community could feel the effects of a nearby data center. The pledge is intended to keep those large-scale power demands from showing up in your monthly bill.

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Kurt’s key takeaways

The ratepayer protection pledge highlights an important turning point. AI is no longer only about innovation and speed. It is also about energy and accountability. If tech companies truly absorb the cost of their expanding power needs, households may avoid some of the financial strain tied to rapid AI growth. If not, utility bills could become an unexpected front line in the AI era.

As AI tools become part of daily life, how much extra power are you willing to support to keep them running? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com.

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Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on “FOX & Friends.” Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s free CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com.

Technology

Here’s your first look at Kratos in Amazon’s God of War show

Published

23 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

Here’s your first look at Kratos in Amazon’s God of War show

Amazon has slowly been teasing out casting details for its live-action adaptation of God of War, and now we have our first look at the show. It’s a single image but a notable one showing protagonist Kratos and his son Atreus. The characters are played by Ryan Hurst and Callum Vinson, respectively, and they look relatively close to their video game counterparts.

There aren’t a lot of other details about the show just yet, but this is Amazon’s official description:

The God of War series storyline follows father and son Kratos and Atreus as they embark on a journey to spread the ashes of their wife and mother, Faye. Through their adventures, Kratos tries to teach his son to be a better god, while Atreus tries to teach his father how to be a better human.

That sounds a lot like the recent soft reboot of the franchise, which started with 2018’s God of War and continued through Ragnarök in 2022. For the Amazon series, Ronald D. Moore, best-known for his work on For All Mankind and Battlestar Galactica, will serve as showrunner. The rest of the cast includes: Mandy Patinkin (Odin), Ed Skrein (Baldur), Max Parker (Heimdall), Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (Thor), Teresa Palmer (Sif), Alastair Duncan (Mimir), Jeff Gulka (Sindri), and Danny Woodburn (Brok).

While production is underway on the God of War series, there’s no word on when it might start streaming.