Storyville: Eternal You, review: thought-provoking dive into the creepy digital-afterlife business

This BBC Four film explored the ethical questions raised by AI services that promise to bring people’s loved ones back from the dead

4/5
Would you like to speak to your loved ones after they die? Perhaps you already do. Many of us hold imaginary conversations with people who are no longer here. But what I mean is: would you like them to speak back? Thanks to AI, this is already possible. 
Numerous companies offer the “digital afterlife” service, as documented in Storyville: Eternal You (BBC Four). The results are so creepy that I half-expected a note before the end credits telling me that this had been a bit of Black Mirror-style science fiction. But it’s really happening. 
And the problem is that some of the people running these companies care very little about the ethics of it all. You give these companies access to emails, texts and voice messages from your loved one. Or you can hand over your own data before you die. Via machine learning, a bot can then reply to questions in the style of the deceased person. Depending on the company, you either end up with a ChatGPT-style text conversation, or a voice simulation. 
The bereaved people featured here find comfort in this. Once you’ve got over the sci-fi weirdness, it throws up some fascinating questions about our attitudes to death. Are the people signing up for these services refusing to accept the reality of loss, or is this a valid way of grieving? 
The film featured an almost unbearable scene of a Korean mother interacting, via a virtual reality headset, with a digital avatar of her seven-year-old daughter. “Mummy missed you so much,” she sobs. It is awful to watch, yet months later the woman feels lighter and is no longer plagued by bad dreams. Is this providing a meaningful service, or exploiting the grief-stricken? 
The tech giants are not part of it yet, although one observer said that they soon will be if they smell that there’s money to be made. Instead, the business is populated by small operators. One CEO (who describes his business as “posthumous communication”) said that eventually you will be able to have a virtual dead relative sitting at the table with you and chatting over a meal. After watching this documentary, you will think this doesn’t seem so far-fetched.