Woman ‘chats’ to dead mother using AI – with ‘spooky’ results
After her mother’s death, Sirine Malas was desperate for an outlet for her grief.
“When you’re weak, you accept anything,” she says.
The actress was separated from her mother Najah after fleeing Syria, their home country, to move to Germany in 2015.
In Berlin, Sirine gave birth to her first child – a daughter called Ischtar – and she wanted more than anything for her mother to meet her. But before they had chance, tragedy struck.
Sirine’s mother Najah
Najah died unexpectedly from kidney failure in 2018 at the age of 82.
“She was a guiding force in my life,” Sirine says of her mother. “She taught me how to love myself.
“The whole thing was cruel because it happened suddenly.
“I really, really wanted her to meet my daughter and I wanted to have that last reunion.”
The grief was unbearable, says Sirine.
Sirine and her daughter Ischtar
“You just want any outlet,” she adds. “For all those emotions… if you leave it there, it just starts killing you, it starts choking you.
“I wanted that last chance (to speak to her).”
After four years of struggling to process her loss, Sirine turned to Project December, an AI tool that claims to “simulate the dead”.
Users fill in a short online form with information about the person they’ve lost, including their age, relationship to the user and a quote from the person.
Sirine says her mother was the ‘guiding force’ in her life
The responses are then fed into an AI chatbot powered by OpenAI’s GPT2, an early version of the large language model behind ChatGPT. This generates a profile based on the user’s memory of the deceased person.
Such models are typically trained on a vast array of books, articles and text from all over the internet to generate responses to questions in a manner similar to a word prediction tool. The responses are not based on factual accuracy.
At a cost of $10 (about £7.80), users can message the chatbot for about an hour.
For Sirine, the results of using the chatbot were “spooky”.
“There were moments that I felt were very real,” she says. “There were also moments where I thought anyone could have answered that this way.”
Imitating her mother, the messages from the chatbot referred to Sirine by her pet name – which she had included in the online form – asked if she was eating well, and told her that she was watching her.
“I am a bit of a spiritual person and I felt that this is a vehicle,” Sirine says.
“My mum could drop a few words in telling me that it’s really me or it’s just someone pretending to be me – I would be able to tell. And I think there were moments like that.”
Sirine’s mother and father
Project December has more than 3,000 users, the majority of whom have used it to imitate a deceased loved one in conversation.
Jason Rohrer, the founder of the service, says users are typically people who have dealt with the sudden loss of a loved one.
Jason Rohrer founded Project December
“Most people who use Project December for this purpose have their final conversation with this dead loved one in a simulated way and then move on,” he says.
“I mean, there are very few customers who keep coming back and keep the person alive.”
He says there isn’t much evidence that people get “hooked” on the tool and struggle to let go.
However, there are concerns that such tools could interrupt the natural process of grieving.
Billie Dunlevy, a therapist accredited by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, says: “The majority of grief therapy is about learning to come to terms with the absence – learning to recognise the new reality or the new normal… so this could interrupt that.”
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In the aftermath of grief, some people retreat and become isolated, the therapist says.
She adds: “You get this vulnerability coupled with this potential power to sort of create this ghost version of a lost parent or a lost child or lost friends.
“And that could be really detrimental to people actually moving on through grief and getting better.”
Therapist Billie Dunlevy
There are currently no specific regulations governing the use of AI technology to imitate the dead.
The world’s first comprehensive legal framework on AI is passing through the final stages of the European parliament before it is passed into law, when it would enforce regulations based on the level of risk posed by different uses of AI.
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The Project December chatbot gave Sirine some of the closure she needed, but she warned bereaved people to tread carefully.
“It’s very useful and it’s very revolutionary,” she says.
“I was very careful not to get too caught up with it.
“I can see people easily getting addicted to using it, getting disillusioned by it, wanting to believe it to the point where it can go bad.
“I wouldn’t recommend people getting too attached to something like that because it could be dangerous.”
A bystander hailed a hero after he tackled and disarmed one of the gunmen in the Bondi Beach shooting is a shop owner.
The man, named by a relative as 43-year-old Ahmed al Ahmed, was seen in a video running up to the attacker from behind and then grabbing the shotgun from his hands before pointing the weapon back at him.
The footage then showed the terrorist heading towards a bridge where another gunman was located, while the bystander placed the gun beside a tree.
Ahmed al Ahmed (in a white T-shirt) is seen in a video running up to a gunman from behind
Mr Ahmed then wrestles with the attacker
Live updates on Sydney shooting
Mr Ahmed, who was wearing a white T-shirt, was shot twice in the incident and was due to have surgery, his cousin, Mustafa, has revealed.
In a video on 7News, Mr Ahmed appeared to have a bloodied arm and hand, and was helped by other people near the scene in the Australian city.
At least 11 people were killed and 29 others injured in the attack when two gunmen opened fire from a bridge on crowds at a Jewish event around 6pm local time on Sunday evening.
More than 1,000 people had been at the gathering which was celebrating the festival of Hanukkah.
Mr Ahmed manages to get the gun off the terrorist
The bystander then points the weapon at the attacker who moves away towards a bridge
A gunman was killed and another was in a critical condition following the shooting.
One of the suspects was 24-year-old Naveed Akram.
His driver’s licence says he lives in Bonnyrigg, a suburb of Sydney. The identity of the other suspected attacker is not known.
Naveed Akram, 24, was one of the suspects
Mustafa said father-of-two Mr Ahmed, who owns a fruit shop in the Sydney suburb of Sutherland, did not have any experience with guns but was just walking past when he decided to step in.
He told 7News: “He’s in hospital and we don’t know exactly what’s going on inside.
“We do hope he will be fine. He’s a hero, 100%.”
Read more:
What we know about mass shooting
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One of the suspected gunmen has been named as 24-year-old Naveed Akram.
The footage of the bystander’s actions spread quickly on social media as people praised the man for his bravery, saying his actions had potentially saved many lives.
“Australian hero (random civilian) wrestles gun off attacker and disarms him. Some people are brave and then some people are… whatever this is,” one person said on X, sharing the video.
“This Australian man saved countless lives by stripping the gun off one of the terrorists at Bondi beach. HERO,” another said.
Chris Minns, the premier of New South Wales state, where Sydney is located, said it was the “most unbelievable scene I’ve ever seen”.
“A man walking up to a gunman who had fired on the community and single-handedly disarming him, putting his own life at risk to save the lives of countless other people.”
“That man is a genuine hero, and I’ve got no doubt that there are many, many people alive tonight as a result of his bravery,” he added.
The country’s prime minister Anthony Albanese praised the actions of Australians who had “run towards danger in order to help others”.
“These Australians are heroes and their bravery has saved lives,” he told a news conference.
Messages were sweeping across Sydney within minutes of the attack at Bondi Beach.
Parents messaged their children and teenagers, who had been enjoying a late afternoon swim at Bondi.
Witnesses said police were on the scene quickly, and the streets of Sydney’s eastern suburbs were full of police cars and ambulances on their way to Bondi.
Follow live: 11 people killed at event celebrating Hanukkah
When we arrived, there were still dozens of people processing what had happened, and everywhere – shock.
Witnesses told us that when the gunfire started some people took cover in the North Bondi Surf Life Saving Club. Once the threat was over, lifeguards helped the injured and used surfboards to carry them out.
Witnesses tell Sky’s Nicole Johnston of Bondi ‘warzone’
Some people were clearly traumatised and provided graphic detail of witnessing the shooting and seeing people killed in front of them.
A photographer, Danny, was covering the Jewish holiday event.
Read more: What we know so far
He said he “locked eyes” with one of the gunmen, who then fired towards him. Danny said he was grazed by a bullet. He kept filming during the shooting, while taking cover.
Sam, from France, was working at Bondi. He went to the scene of the attack and saw almost a dozen people lying on the ground covered in blood. Sam described it as like a “war zone”.
Rabbi Lei Wolff, from Central Synagogue in Sydney, went to Bondi as soon as he heard about the mass shooting. A dear friend of his, Rabbi Eli Schlanger, was killed in the attack.
Rabbi Wolff has called on people around the world to stand with Australia’s Jewish community against terrorism.
World
Israel says Hamas commander – who was one of the architects of the 7 October 2023 attacks – killed in strike
A senior Hamas commander who was one of the architects of the 7 October 2023 attacks on Israel has been killed in a strike on Gaza City, according to the country’s military.
Raed Saad was targeted in response to an attack by Hamas in which an explosive device injured two soldiers on Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a joint statement.
It is the highest-profile killing of a senior Hamas figure since the Gaza ceasefire came into effect in October.
Gaza health authorities said the attack on a car in Gaza City killed five people and wounded at least 25 others, but there has been no confirmation from Hamas or medics that Saed was among the dead.
Raed Saed
Hamas condemned the attack in a statement as a violation of the ceasefire agreement but stopped short of threatening retaliation.
An Israeli military official described Saed as a high-ranked Hamas member who helped establish and advance the group’s weapons production network.
“In recent months, he operated to re-establish Hamas’ capabilities and weapons manufacturing, a blatant violation of the ceasefire,” the official said.
The 10 October ceasefire has enabled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to return to Gaza City’s ruins after a war that began after Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and seized 251 hostages in an attack on southern Israel.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 70,700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to health officials in Gaza.
Israel has pulled troops back from city positions, and aid flows have increased, but violence has not completely stopped.
Palestinian health authorities say Israeli forces have killed at least 386 people in strikes in Gaza since the truce, while Israel says three of its soldiers have been killed.
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