What happens to the social media accounts of those who escape this mortal coil topic of debate Ever since technology has become mainstream. Should inactive accounts be left alone, or given backdoor access to their living loved ones to be maintained as a digital memorial?
For the meta, a morbid alternative might be: training AI models on a deceased user’s posts, keeping postmortem accounts active by uploading new content in their voice long after their demise.
As business insider reportsMeta was granted a patent for this idea in 2023, describing how a large language model (LLM) could “simulate” a user’s social media activity.
“When the user is absent from the social networking system, for example, when the user takes a long break or if the user dies, the language model may be used to simulate the user,” reads the hair-raising patent, which lists the company’s CTO Andrew Bosworth as the primary author.
However, it appears that the conversation has changed dramatically over the past three years, especially now that AI slop has infiltrated and practically taken control of platforms like Facebook and Instagram: Meta now says it has abandoned the sepulchral concept.
A spokesperson said, “We have no plans to move forward with this precedent.” BI.
We’ve already seen countless examples of AI being used to simulate dead people, from a grandmother who was resurrected as an AI model for her funeral, to a “grief tech” startup that aims to train AI models on images, recordings, and footage of deceased loved ones.
“The impact on users is much more severe and permanent if that user is dead and can never return to the social networking platform,” the Meta patent reads.
According to the patent, a digital clone of the deceased person will be able to interact with people through likes and comments and even DMs.
Although the company has since distanced itself from this terrible idea, the very existence of the patent highlights how companies were – and in many ways, still are – putting everything on the line to discover new use cases for LLMs, and how far they are willing to go.
For example, last year Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg even suggested That single users can befriend the company’s bots instead of live humans. in 2023 Interview with podcaster Lex FriedmanHe appeared to echo the ideas in the patent by saying that virtual avatars could take over the accounts of dead people.
“If someone has lost a loved one and is grieving, there may be ways to help communicate or relive some memories,” he told Friedman at the time.
“But still potentially to a certain extent it could be unhealthy,” he acknowledged. “And I mean, I’m not an expert in it, so I think we’ll have to study it and understand it in more detail.”
“Unfortunately, you know, we already have a lot of experience with death and identity and handling people’s digital content through social media,” Zuckerberg said.
It would not be a stretch to assume that Meta might have had some ulterior motive in creating digital avatars of the deceased. Facebook quickly turns into a graveyard of long-forgotten accounts, never-ending ads, unanswered birthday wishes, and updates from that band you haven’t thought about since high school. Plus, its feeds are filling up with toxic AI slop.
As engagement declines, the company’s core business – selling advertising – may suffer.
“It’s more engagement, more content, more data – more data for current and future AI,” explained Adina Harbinja, a law professor at the University of Birmingham. BI. “I can see the business incentive for this. I’m just curious to see how, when, and whether they will implement this innovation.”
Other experts were astonished by the idea of training an LLM in the post of a deceased person.
“One function of grief is to cope with real loss,” said Joseph Davis, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia. BI. “Let the dead remain dead.”
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