How Data Can Create Full-On Apparitions of the Dead

Joaquin Oliver died in the 2018 Parkland shooting, but recently, he urged people to vote in the 2020 election. Oliver's parents used A.I. to have their dead son encourage people to vote for officials who support gun control, as an extension of the nonprofit they run, Change the Ref. Technologists 3D-printed Oliver's image and created a video of him speaking out against gun violence, which his parents could take to protests around the country. In the video, Oliver's likeness says "I mean, vote for me. Parkland victim Joaquin Oliver urged people to vote in a video that used artificial intelligence to imagine what he'd look like today. Oliver was killed in 2018 in the MSD high school shooting. The video of Oliver, titled "Unfinished Vote," used deepfake technology from Lightfarm Studios. For deepfakes--images and videos generated using A.I.--of celebrities, influencers, or politicians, or more typical public figures, the production team would usually have thousands of images and videos with which to train the A.I. But in the case of a teenager who was more famous after death than during life, the technologists didn't have much material to work with. Instead, they created a single image of his face using three different photographs. Still, the video is convincing enough. The uncanny valley effect comes after the fact, once you realize that the young man in the video who is speaking to you is not actually speaking. On Thursday, shortly before Halloween and in the wake of a much derided, viral tweet exposing her immense wealth and privilege, Kim Kardashian West reacted to Kanye West's surprise gift to her: a hologram of her dead father. In an Instagram post, Kardashian West wrote, "For my birthday, Kanye got me the most thoughtful gift of a lifetime.