AI Is No Way to Revive the Dead A controversial new company promises to let us speak to dead loved ones. It cheapens our relationships with the living.
“We need loss and will regret losing it.” (George Karger via Getty Images)
A week after we buried my grandmother, I had a dream that she and I had dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Midtown Manhattan and she gave me advice about my love life, which was odd, because she had never done that before. This article is featured in Culture and Ideas. Sign up here to get an update every time a new piece is published. I have been thinking about this dream ever since I learned of this new app called 2wai, which is apparently pronounced 2-way and enables “real-time, two-way conversations” with so-called HoloAvatars—including dead people. (Its website is a little coy about this, but a recent 2wai ad, which features a little boy named Charlie who grows up speaking with a grandmother he’s never met, is not.) “Human connection, reimagined in the age of AI,” the website promises...
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