Eternal You: Documentary portrait about the rush to digitally resurrect dead loved ones is scarier than any AI fiction“If you had the chance to talk to someone that died, that you love, would you take it?” asks Christi Angel in this apprehensive documentary portrait of dead-raising digital capitalism. Angel is one of several users of
Project December founder Jason Rohrer dismisses these glitches. He later chuckles at the transcripts from a dissatisfied customer who writes off her AI-generated dad as the “biggest scam ever”. “Dad” escalates with: “f**king b*tch, you’re going to pay.” A Korean producer wonders about the ethics of his TV special, in which a grieving mother, Jang Ji-sung, sobs and hugs a VR re-creation of her dead daughter, Na-yeon. “She looks dreary,” he says of the young mum in the video edit. Jang claims that after the encounter her little girl no longer haunts her dreams. Images of the woman wearing a VR headset, grasping into nothingness, make one think of the table-knocking parlour tricks of Victorian spiritualists.