AI Horizon

The rise of AI has helped us make some huge leaps. From helping with medicine research to spotting cancer, the advances enabled by AI have been pretty remarkable. But at the same time, even the most popular AI tools, such as ChatGPT, have gone haywire in the most astounding fashion. 

Over the past couple of years, reports have detailed how ChatGPT guided a person about murder, accused a person of killing their children, and nudged them into a conspiracy theory spiral. It seems the next hot thing is using ChatGPT to write obituaries of loved ones. Or even building a business atop the massive demand.

ChatGPT, for the dead among us

According to a report in The Washington Post, funeral homes are using ChatGPT to “ write obituaries all the time without telling their clients.” Of course, they have to do it with a lot of caution, or else ChatGPT will turn the obituaries into unrealistic accounts of how a person passed away among their loved ones or departed the mortal plane peacefully. 

“We don’t know that it was a peaceful death, though we’d like to imagine it was,” an anonymous employee at a funeral home was quoted as saying. But it’s not just funeral homes and some enterprising tech founders that are using AI to write obituaries, while charging for it. Regular folks are using it, too, and seem quite happy about it. 

A Nevada resident, who used ChatGPT to write their mother’s obituary, told the outlet that “she’d be very happy with the end result.” The individual has even more ambitious plans for the future when they might have to write an obituary for their father. 

“This time I’m gonna use Deep Research mode. It’s gonna be a banger,” the individual was quoted as saying by The Post. Some folks who talked with the reporter argued that it’s not easy to articulate their feelings in moments of profound grief, and that AI tools like ChatGPT made it easier to write an obituary. 

All is fair with death and business

Interestingly, it seems using AI tools such as ChatGPT is not just a personal choice or a sly act by some funeral homes. It’s a booming business, and there are multiple companies out there that are offering “AI for obituary” services — for a price. 

One of those companies is CelebrateAlly, founded by a former Microsoft employee, which charges customers $5 for 100 credits. An obituary usually takes 10 credits, which means you can write a fresh eulogy honoring your departed loved one for just fifty cents each. 

The company even lets users pick between ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude AI model to change the tone or contents of the obituary. But the underlying technology is not without its faults, and if ignored, it can lead to some bizarre scenarios. Here’s a segment from the report: 

Instructed to write a “playful” obituary for a spirited, funny and faith-filled fake person, the AI tool said the man had been “born on a chilly day,” “lived by the words of the great Groucho Marx,” “inspired everyone” and died in a “sunny embrace,” despite being given none of that information. In other prompts, it invented fake nicknames, preferences and life events, even declaring that the man had established a community theater and mentored a “young comedian … who went on to tour nationally.”

ChatGPT is not the only tool making up stuff. Google’s Gemini AI told a person to add glue to their pizza. Microsoft’s AI is no different. Recent research says that depending too much on AI tools is leading to a cognitive decline and that it hinders real research. Some experts are also concerned about deep psychological and moral issues. 

AI companion apps, such as Character AI and Nomi, have given rise to a segment of users who are obsessed with their AI-generated partners, at the cost of real human connections. Some are even getting their AI partners pregnant and staying deeply engrossed in their own digital reality, while paying hundreds of dollars to the AI companies behind the software.