Deepfakes Can Help Families Mourn--or Exploit Their Grief

We now have the ability to reanimate the dead. Improvements in machine learning over the past decade have given us the ability to break through the fossilized past and see our dearly departed as they once were: talking, moving, smiling, laughing. Though deepfake tools have been around for some time, they've become increasingly available to the general public in recent years, thanks to products like Deep Nostalgia--developed by ancestry site My Heritage--that allow the average person to breathe life back into those they've lost. Despite their increased accessibility, these technologies generate controversy whenever they're used, with critics deeming the moving images--so lifelike yet void of life--"disturbing," "creepy," and "admittedly queasy." In 2020, when Kanye got Kim a hologram of her late father for her birthday, writers quickly decried the gift as a move out of Black Mirror.