Heart and Soul: Digital grief

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2024

⏱️ 27 minutes

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Summary

New digital technologies including AI have started to find a place in the grieving process, sometimes alongside more traditional religious rituals. 'Grief tech' concepts are springing up across the world, aiming to mask the finality of death for those left behind. Nkem Ifejika, who lost his mother three years ago, samples some grief tech products. He meets Stephen Smith, creator of StoryFile, a system which enables him to interact with his late mother almost as if he was interviewing her on video in the here and now. He talks to Japanese media artist Etsuko Ichihara, who has developed a robot that mirrors the physical personality, speech and gestures of a person who has died. And Nkem hears from Justin Harrison, who has been working on recreating the essence of his late mother’s personality.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm in Brighton, the seaside town in southern England where I've made my home. Walking along the
0:14.5	sea front here I often think of my mom Bridgeto Kirier who died suddenly three
0:19.6	years ago. She lived in Nigeria thousands of miles away. We'd spoken a day or so earlier and there was
0:27.5	nothing to suggest it would be the last time we'd talk. My mom was a devout Christian who believed that when she died she would be reunited with
0:36.2	her lord and savior.
0:38.3	Whenever she was aggrieved by something, she would say, I don't want to do anything that
0:42.4	would make me miss heaven.
0:44.1	But I didn't want her in heaven, not yet anyway, wanted her with me.
0:49.2	When I heard she died, I called her phone repeatedly because I just wanted to hear her voicemail message
1:00.3	Perhaps I felt that if I could only hear her voice it would undo what had happened.
1:06.1	Make it not real.
1:09.1	So what if, in the age of artificial intelligence, there were ways I could make it not so real.
1:15.5	Keep her with me.
1:17.5	Would it help me deal with my grief or prolong it?
1:21.5	This is the documentary from the BBC World Service. or prolong it.
1:22.7	This is the documentary from the BBC World Service.
1:25.6	I'm in Kemi Fejicant and in this episode of Heart and Soul I'll be exploring digital
1:31.5	grief and how development and technology and artificial
1:35.3	intelligence are changing the ways we grieve. It's not been an easy journey for
1:41.0	me, please be aware it may not be an easy listen for you either.
1:45.0	In this program I'll be hearing from two tech entrepreneurs based in California
1:54.9	both around my age and both like me only sons dealing with the loss of their mums
	...

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