Western Morning News (Saturday)
Charmian Evans I don’t need an app to remember my Mum
MY dear old Mum hasn’t been out of our cellar for 18 months. Finally, next weekend, we’ll move her. She died in 2019, and her boxed ashes have been unceremoniously plonked, perhaps appropriately, within reach of the demijohns of sloe gin and mulberry vodka that I make. Mum enjoyed a drink and the irony wouldn’t be wasted on her.
Covid has prevented our family meeting to inter her, on top of my Dad as it were, in our local churchyard. She would be thrilled to see all the family gather. I have no doubt that she’ll be with us in spirit, and I bet she’ll look at our daughter and remember when she trotted in to see her and announced that she was taking “cremation lessons”. She of course, meant confirmation, but it gave Mum a good laugh.
I was a colleague and close friend to Katie Boyle, the TV personality and model. I thought of her as I arranged for the service for Mum. Her second husband, Greville, had been cremated and Kate decided to scatter him in her rose garden at their home in Hampstead. Unfortunately, nature had its way, and a huge gust of wind blew poor Greville in a whirl, most of him landing on the windscreen of Katie’s Rolls Royce. “So I drove the car to the Finchley Road car wash,” she said ruefully “and Greville landed up going down their drain”.
I’m lucky to have happy memories of my lovely Mum, and try not to dwell on the last years of her dementia, focusing instead on the fun times and her strengths, and smile over photographs and memories that they bring back. I learned recently that, for some, this isn’t enough.
Microsoft has issued a patent for an artificial intelligence tool that would replicate a person so they could still “take part” in conversations after they’ve died. It’s a chatbot that can be trained using videos and voice recordings, plus letters or social media posts.
And if you think this can only be heard in a lab, you’re wrong. Microsoft say that the system can be used via Alexa, or a smart phone app. According to the app developers, the chatbot would “converse and interact in the personality of a specific person” and be able to “correspond to a past or present entity such as a friend, a relative, an acquaintance, a celebrity, a fictional character or an historical figure”. Just as I’m trying to figure this out, I read that as well as the audio component, a 2D or 3D likeness could be created using images and video data of a particular person. This is getting very spooky.
An AI company in California are developing a system using voice recognition to talk and reminisce in the voice of the dead person. The idea has attracted a long waiting list of people ready to be interviewed about their lives. The recordings are categorised into “happy”, “sad” or other aspects they want portrayed, so when they’ve gone, users of the app would be able to say “Dad, tell me how you met Mum” and their late Dad would do just that.
Avatars are also being produced taken from social media profiles, so you can’t be too careful. Apparently, Kim Kardashian got a bit of a shock on her 40th birthday when her dead father appeared as a hologram to tell her that he watches over her every day. I’ve no doubt this is the way of the future. You can’t even be laid to rest now without someone digging you up, not literally I hope, to have a conversation.
I suppose it’s no more than relatives of famous people who have died watching them on screen. Is it painful or comforting for, say, actress Kate Beckinsale to watch her father Richard appear in Porridge or Rising Damp? He died when she was small, so how is it for her watching him as an adult, set in celluloid?
The difference with this latest technique is that it’s very personal, directed at family members. There could be the chance for family scores to be settled, consciences to be assuaged. Imagine linking in and your Mum says, “You know our neighbour Fred is your father”. Or, “I wish I’d been a better brother and not done you out of your inheritance”. I mean, you can just imagine this as a post-death confessional, the chance to get something off your chest knowing you won’t be there to take the flack.
Or can you try and have the last word to your relatives and friends? Tell ’em things you’d never dared? Maybe some people would find it easier to express their love and admiration for those still left, give them the thanks they never got. Or perhaps the voice and face from the grave will moan about how badly they were treated. Who knows, but once this sort of AI is out of the bottle it could end up anywhere.
We, meanwhile, will carry my old Mum lovingly to the churchyard, send her on her way with the love she so deserves. As the saying goes... “You’re not dead till you’re forgotten”. We won’t be needing an app to remember her.
As the saying goes... ‘You’re not dead till you’re forgotten’. We won’t be needing an app to remember her