Talking with AI ghosts of loved ones

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Megan McCarty Carino (1:01)

The ghost in the machine. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Megan McCarty-Corino.

There's a growing market for AI models that promise to recreate the experience of interacting with a lost loved one. They're sometimes called generative ghosts, and they're the topic for today's Uncanny AI, a regular segment about our sometimes unsettling experiences with this technology. Jack Manning has been looking into this. He's a Ph.D. student of Information Science at the University of Colorado Boulder, and he recently published a study on how people experience talking to generative ghosts.

Jack Manning (1:52)

We had all of the data provided to the model by the participants themselves, providing information on their loved one, where they grew up, any key jobs or occupations they had, hobbies, how they'd like to spend their time. And we often colored the model additionally by prompting the participant to share a core memory that they had of their loved one.

Megan McCarty Carino (2:14)

And you tested sort of two different versions of AI ghosts, like a first person and a third person. Break this down for me.

Jack Manning (2:23)

Yeah, that's exactly right. So our paper is built on top of prior research by Dr. Brubaker, who kind of coined the term generative ghosts alongside Mary Morris.

And they laid out a foundation of all the different design elements that a generative ghost could have. And we were really focused on one in particular. We coined them as representation or reincarnation, like you said, first person or third person perspective. And we were really interested in how that minor distinction would change our participants' experiences with chatting with these bots.

Megan McCarty Carino (2:58)

So in one instance, you had sort of the chat bot saying, I am in the first person representing the person, and in the others, almost like a medium.

Jack Manning (3:12)

Yeah, like a medium or a family archivist, they would act as a representative and say, if there's anything you'd like to know about your loved one, I'd be happy to answer any questions for you.

And the reincarnation mode would just say, hey, how are you doing? It's your grandpa or whoever it was for the given participant.

Megan McCarty Carino (3:30)

And so how did your subjects respond to these?

Jack Manning (3:35)

We found that a vast majority of our participants really enjoyed their experience, many of them describing it as positive or informative, cathartic, some even describing a desire to continue on having more conversations with these bots. The things that they found the most impactful were a little different than what we had expected. But on the whole, they really appreciated the experience.

Megan McCarty Carino (4:00)

But many of these subjects also kind of expressed some reservation about, you know, concern that it could become an unhealthy thing or maybe relying on on it too much. What did you make of that?

Jack Manning (4:16)

Yeah, absolutely. That's something I think we all expected to happen. There's a lot of reservation around AI in the world.

The most interesting element of it, it was often very one-sided. When we asked our participants to talk about any reservations or fears that they had surrounding this technology, it was never pointed inward. It was always the sentiment of, oh, this was really great for me. I really enjoyed it, but my family shouldn't interact with this technology. Or, oh, I thought it was great, but my brother would become overriding, or my parents would have a sense of dependency. So there's something that needs to be explored there more of why it was only that outward-facing reservations instead of pointed inwards towards themselves.