"Last year was tough for everyone," said a Chinese AI boss as he addressed a recent annual general meeting – and 2023 had indeed been tough for him. He died.
A growing number of people in China are buying AI-generated avatars of loved ones to help process their grief, raising a number of ethical and legal questions.
SenseTime founder Tang Xiao'ou spoke from beyond the grave as a digital clone that had been trained by the company's engineers using a large language model machine learning programme trained on video and audio clips of Tang.
A "new way of remembering, and reviving" beloved relatives is "being born", said The Guardian. For only 20 yuan (£2.20) Chinese people can "create a moving digital avatar of their loved one".
The technology "isn't perfect", said MIT Technology Review, because "avatars can still be stiff and robotic", but it's "maturing, and more tools are becoming available through more companies".
It's already big business. The market for "digital humans" was worth 12 billion yuan (£1.3 billion) in 2022 and is expected to quadruple by next year.
This has led to some moral quandaries. Some have questioned whether "interacting with AI replicas of the dead" is "a healthy way to process grief", said MIT Technology Review. "It's not entirely clear what the legal and ethical implications of this technology may be."
The market is "particularly strong in China", said MIT Technology Review. During the annual Qingming festival in April "Chinese people sweep the tombs of their ancestors, burn joss sticks and fake paper money, and tell them what has happened in the past year".
This festival "provides a particular opportunity for this kind of technology", said The Guardian, and China's "digital natives are likely to experiment with digital afterlives faster than living policymakers can regulate them". | 
