"What happens to social media accounts belonging to those who shuffle off this mortal coil has been a subject of debate ever since the tech went mainstream. Should dormant accounts be left alone, or should their surviving loved ones be given backdoor access to maintain them as digital memorials? To Meta, there could be a morbid alternative: training an AI model on a deceased user's posts, keeping post-mortem accounts active by uploading new content in their voice long after they passed away."
"The language model may be used for simulating the user when the user is absent from the social networking system, for example, when the user takes a long break or if the user is deceased, reads the goosebump-raising patent, which lists the company's CTO Andrew Bosworth as the primary author. A digital clone of the deceased person would have been able to interact with people through likes and comments - and even DMs - according to the patent."
Debate persists over how to handle social media accounts after a user's death, including whether relatives should manage memorials or accounts remain untouched. Meta secured a 2023 patent describing how a large language model could be trained on a user's posts to simulate social activity when the user is absent or deceased. The proposed system could generate posts, likes, comments and direct messages in the user’s voice and maintain accounts posthumously. Similar practices have appeared in funerals and grief-tech startups that train models on images and recordings. Meta later stated it has no plans to move forward with that example, amid ethical concerns about permanence and harm.
Read at Futurism
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