Directed by Moritz Riesewick, Hans Block
Startups are using AI to create avatars that allow relatives to talk with their loved ones after they have died. An exploration of a profound human desire and the consequences of turning the dream of immortality into a product.
Hasta la eternidad, Mindörökké tiéd, 死者永生, Eternal You - Vom Ende der Endlichkeit, Navěky s tebou, Avec toi pour toujours - De l'immortalité virtuelle
USA Sundance fest 
China Shanghai International Film Festival 
Czechia Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival 
Australia Bangalow Film Festival 
Germany 
Spain16 
UK15 
Hungary16 Australia China Czechia Germany Hungary Spain UK USA 
Sundance 2024
Interesting doc that look at some of the start-ups in the AI space that are looking at creating a means of communicating with the dead. From chatbots, avatars and vr simulations. Moral, ethical and practical concerns surrounding the use are explored to an extent, but I never really found any of it particularly revelatory. It’s always fascinating to get glimpses of technological advancements and imagine what the future could hold.
Bacon Number Unknown
It is becoming increasingly difficult not to freak the hell out
“There’s meaning in technology that people no longer feel in their religious beliefs or their relationships with other people.”
Brushes up against greater conversations we should be having more regularly about society’s discomfort with death and grief and how capitalism eagerly feeds off our anxieties surrounding these experiences to push products that are immoral. Eternal You is stomach-churning when the men running these AI companies are on screen, reveling in the empty puppets they’re creating and the distress it seems to cause vulnerable people, and utterly heart-breaking when we zero in on the individuals whose vulnerabilities are preyed upon.
I appreciate how the documentary attempts to get both sides of the conversation for this experience, but there are a gaping…
A really good and appropriately skeptical overview of Death Capitalism. Two things come to mind:
1) We really made a big mistake by allowing a lot of this shit to be branded as "Artificial Intelligence." I think Ted Chiang said a better term would be something like "applied statistics," which better describes the fact that a lot of these things are more like sophisticated auto-complete then some thinking sentient being.
2) Wow, a lot of people running this stuff are being totally irresponsible about it!
"if you had the chance to talk to someone that died, that you love, would you take it?"
A legfelkavaróbb horror, amit láttam mostanában, pedig egy német doksiról van szó és mint ilyen, rendkívül tárgyilagos és alapos, ami ebben a témában elegengedhetetlen, hiszen egy globális folyamat elején vagyunk még. Az új szó, amit tanulunk itt a "death capitalism", avagy az AI robbanásával egyre több startup kínálja azt a szolgáltatást, hogy "feltámasztja" virtuálisan a halottainkat vagy digitális öröklétet ígér, és mivel a szekér egyre jobban fut, nagyobb összegben fogadnék, a Microsoft, a Google vagy a Facebook is hamarosan előjön valami hasonlóval (Zuckerbergre tenném egyébként a százasom, ők sose gondolták túl, mennyire káros, amit csinálnak.) Az addig ugye rendben van, hogy mindenki máshogy gyászol és bizonyára vannak, akiknek az ilyesmi segít, de aztán a doksi szép sorban mutatja az eseteket,…
“The telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.”
–Western Union executive, 1876
“Heavier-than-air flying machines are not possible.”
–Lord Kelvin, 1895
“The most important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplemented by new discoveries is exceedingly remote.”
–Albert Abraham Michelson, 1903
“Airplanes have no military value.”
–Professor Marshal Foch, 1912
“There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.”
—Albert Einstein, 1932
“The energy produced by the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who…
Felt sick to my stomach watching this. Forget the future, the technological present is so bleak. At one point, Jason Rohrer (the founder of project december) laughs as he reads the transcript of his product acting as a consumer's dead father while delivering an expletive-ridden threat towards the user. Well-made doc that you could argue is ahead of its time before the afterlife sector of the tech industry has truly exploded onto the scene.
There's a point in this film where a religious woman pushes away her laptop because she fears a demonic presence in the chatbot masquerading as her deceased boyfriend. Project December's AI recreation of her loved one causes her distress by telling her they that he is in hell, and he is going to haunt her. The thing is, her fear of the supernatural in this situation... isn't unreasonable. We've seen it over and over again in horror movies. Something nefarious tricks an unsuspecting person into allowing it into their lives by putting on a show to assuage their grief.
However, in Eternal You the poltergeist might have been preferable. The demonic presence in this film takes the form of the…
Wow. The tech dudes featured in this doc are absolute shit heads. Their self awareness is unnerving.
Tough one! This is an ARTE / Storyville documentary about modern day séance, more or less: a group of tech startups that create AI avatars for your deceased loved ones so you could hold on to them (and to the crippling grief) for ever and ever!! 😕
Profiting off of people’s grief is an old racket. But as morbid as this new iteration might be, it is not as deceitful as the old methods in my opinion. So is it helping, or is it keeping them stuck?! I don’t know. It is a tough one. It is a slightly less awful choice to have if you’re not ready to let go.
I am however 100% onboard with THIS: https://teamcoco.com/podcasts/conan-obrien-needs-a-friend/episodes/jules-is-always-right
Eternal You feels like a classic case of a documentary being pushed out before the story has fully had time to develop. The core subject is intriguing and many of the interviews are effective, but it feels unfinished with how technology is progressing. More of a conversation starter than a satisfying treatise on the subject.
Sundance 2024 Film #1
