aMillions of people across China visit their ancestors’ graves to pay their respects during the annual Tomb Sweeping Festival. This means new ways to remember and bring back beloved relatives are emerging.
Some services advertised online say Chinese netizens can create animated digital avatars of their loved ones for as little as 20 yuan (£2.20). So this year, to mark Thursday’s Tomb Sweeping Festival, innovative mourners are relying on artificial intelligence to connect with the deceased.
On the more sophisticated end of the spectrum, Taiwanese singer Bao Xiaobai used AI to “bring back to life” her 22-year-old daughter who died in 2022. Even though there was only an audio recording of her speaking three sentences of English, Bao reportedly spent: He experimented with AI technology for over a year before he managed to create it. his daughter video She sang Happy Birthday to her mother and published it in January.
“People around me think I have lost my mind,” Bao said in an interview with Chinese media. But she also added, “I want to hear her voice again.”
Interest in digital cloning of deceased people is growing as China’s AI industry continues to expand into human-like avatars. According to some estimates, the market size of “digital humans” is expected to reach 12 billion yuan in 2022, and quadruple by 2025. One reason Chinese tech companies are so good at creating digital humans is because China has a huge army of livestreamers. Companies that generated an estimated 5 trillion yuan in revenue last year are using AI to clone themselves and sell their products 24/7.
Last month, SenseTime, one of China’s leading AI companies, showcased its skills in this field during founder Tang Xiao’ou’s speech at its annual general meeting. “Hello everyone. See you soon,” Tan told employees. “The past year has been difficult for everyone, but I believe that hard times will pass.”
Mr Tan’s 2023 has been particularly difficult. Because he passed away on December 15th at the age of 55. His speech was delivered by a digital clone trained by SenseTime engineers using a large-scale language model machine learning program trained on Tang’s video and audio clips. .
The Tomb Sweeping Festival is a special occasion for this type of technology.a software developer I said it on Weibo He said he has already helped more than 600 families “achieve reunification” with their loved ones this year.
But bereaved families are not the only ones using AI to bring their loved ones back to life. Social media users recently used old footage of singer Qiao Renliang, who passed away in 2016, to create new content featuring him. In one video, his AI clone of Qiao says: “Actually, I never left.” However, the parents of Mr. Qiao, who committed suicide, were furious. His father was quoted in Chinese media as saying the video “revealed his scars” and was made without his family’s consent.
Some Chinese lawyers argue that such content should be banned if it causes “mental distress” to the relatives of the deceased. But as grievers gather for a grave-sweeping festival, China’s digital natives are likely to experiment with a digital afterlife faster than flesh-and-blood policymakers can regulate it.
Additional research by Chi Hui Lin
Source: www.theguardian.com
