unrevelant

A friend of mine called this back in 2019. Even wrote a short story about it; https://www.ectoplus.com/shorts/replacement/ - apparently I was the only person among the beta readers that figured it as a horror piece.

It'll be a damned seductive business model. Reach out to people in their moment of greatest grief, offer a customized service with a subscription attached, and they never have to let go. Receive photos, videos, phone calls with an AI model of their partner. Why grieve at all? It's just like switching to a long distance relationship. Worse, unsubscribing would be like letting your loved one die all over again. The potential for abuse is... astronomical.

Seems like a less advanced, but clearly more automatable version of the South Korean mother who was able to see her deceased 7-year-old in VR[0][1]. A friend of mine wrote a short story about this sort of thing a couple of years ago[2]. We actually spoke about it, and it got me to wondering what the business model of a service like this could be. Subscribing to receive videos from and communicate with a deceased relative. "Unsubscribing" would be like condemning them to the grave yourself. It's gross and scummy, but I could definitely see it being backed. Money on the table, I guess.

[0]: https://www.pcgamer.com/a-grieving-mother-meets-her-deceased... [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uflTK8c4w0c&feature=youtu.be [2]: https://www.ectoplus.com/shorts/replacement/