Artificial Intelligence, Real Emotion
A personal account of the ways in which AI can preserve memories and facilitate the grieving process.
“We should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that … With artificial intelligence, we’re summoning the demon.” – Elon Musk, businessman and entrepreneur, Tesla, SpaceX and X
“Artificial intelligence will never be a match for natural stupidity.”– Unknown
“A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.” – Alan Perlis, computer scientist and professor, Purdue, Carnegie Mellon and Yale University
“In a sense, artificial intelligence will be the ultimate tool because it will help us build all possible tools.” – K. Eric Drexler, engineer and author
I usually begin my writings with a quote – sometimes sage, sometimes satirical – to highlight the general focus of the article. Here, I gave you four quotations to start, namely because the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) is still not widely understood. Many perceive it as mercurial and controversial, but I am not here to persuade you that AI is virtuous or evil.
Usually, my articles for The Director center around paradigms of and approaches to leadership, talent attraction and retention, process improvement, or the adoption of technologies that make sense for funeral home owners and operators. In this article, however, no statistics, hypothetical scenarios, or “certified,” theory-based processes will be thrown at you. This is based purely on my personal experience with grief and how AI positively affected me and possibly every other attendee of one particular funeral service.
My family lost my sister-in-law on August 3, 2025. I say she was my sister-in-law only to designate that we were born of different parents and that she was married to one of my brothers. However, she was every bit a sister to me, perhaps even more so than my one sister by blood.
I was traveling when I received the voice message from my oldest niece letting me know that my sister-in-law had passed away. For weeks, she had been battling sepsis, stemming from a kidney stone that blocked one of her kidneys from fully functioning.
I provided all the emotional support and counsel to my niece and two nephews that I could from afar, but I honestly did not know what to expect upon my return home. Her service was scheduled for Sunday, August 10, then she was to be shipped from Texas back to her home state of Wisconsin for committal services and burial next to her parents. Our private family time was beautiful and allowed us all to see her, pray and say our final goodbyes. The one-hour visitation prior to the service brought together so many people whose lives my sister-in-law touched, both directly and indirectly.
My niece and two nephews led the service. They each spoke, intermingling personal speeches and anecdotes from their first cousin (my nephew from my other brother) and my sister-in-law’s grandchildren. No clergy. No celebrant. No “official” officiant of any kind from the funeral home. I know that I am skirting my personal perspective and professional perspective a bit, but please bear with me. I will address this more later.
My nephew, the youngest child in this line of Ngos, closed his speech in honor of his mother with a five-minute video. To create it, he compiled photos that had been shared with the funeral home and included in the tribute video that played during the visitation. He then used AI to animate each photo he’d hand-selected and played them to the soundtrack of Journey’s “Faithfully.” Now, admittedly, I am not a public crier, but I was fighting to hold back tears (and, even so, a few dropped). I recall looking around the chapel…Not. Another. Dry. Eye.
There is something incredibly cathartic about the experience of saying goodbye to a loved one. In this case, we were able to say goodbye to my sister-in-law during an open-casket private family viewing and general visitation. Then, again, we got to say goodbye during the service, where animated snapshots of her – moments that some attendees and I distinctly remember happening in real time – were displayed. I obviously cannot include this particular AI-supported video in a static article, but I will try to help you visualize how AI might very well impact your services moving forward with an example.
The left image shown below is a scanned original photo of my parents (yes, these are my real parents). On the right is an image generated by ChatGPT. I simply asked it to alter the original photo so that my parents were “looking at one another, smiling.” This took less than ninety seconds to complete. Now, imagine an animated video where AI has connected the first photo and the second photo so that the subjects can be seen slowly turning toward one another and smiling.
I have not had the opportunity to ask my nephew which AI application he used to animate the private family photos – he is in Wisconsin with his family the week of this writing to inter my sister-in law next to her parents. However, an online search yields results for “quick, one-click facial animation” AI such as MyHeritage Deep Nostalgia, Tokking-Heads and D-ID; “photo-to-video with audio and motion” AI such as Google Gemini V3 (subscription required) and Google Remix; and “creative-style animation and cinegraph” AI such as PixaMotion, Motionleap and VIMAGE.
Returning to previous subject matter, there was not an “official” funeral home officiant nor did the funeral home produce the touching AI-generated animations of our family photos. I get it. This was a case that involved pickup, embalming, casketing and dressing, as well as a one-hour private family viewing, one-hour limited visitation and one-hour service. That’s not to mention the shipout. But did this particular funeral home do the best that it could have? Would you have maximized the opportunities at hand better than the presiding funeral home did?
I’m only sharing my personal experiences and how my perspective has been shaped by them. My niece and two nephews are highly educated and generally knew what they wanted for their mother because their father (my brother) passed two years ago. My nephew, the youngest in his stock of Ngos, is an engineer for Calpine. He has always been an early adopter of technology and, in this instance, AI. And most of my family members reside in the megalopolis known as the greater Houston area, where there are approximately 7.4 million people. (We’re not talking Small Town, U.S.A., with a population of 5,000.) This is all to say that I am by no means “faulting” the presiding funeral home. Everything was planned, directed and executed the way it should have been.
However, my lingering questions are: Could the funeral home have provided a celebrant to speak about my sister-in-law in the genuinely heartfelt way that my family members were able to? Could the funeral home have used AI to animate photos for a tribute video that ultimately surpassed the emotional impact of a “standard” one?
My personal, emotional cap is off, and my logical cap is back on. So, my next question is: How many of you would be able to fulfill a family’s request if they wanted something similar? My next question of logic is: If families can do these things on their own, then what need do they have for you? This is right in line with the sentiments of a CEO for whom I used to work. He would say, “If I have to correct what you do in your job, then what use do I have for you?”
My prompts for you to take away are: Wouldn’t it be great if your funeral business could be out in front of the curve? Lead the pack? Surprise families by leveraging the value of AI? If you do not have someone on staff who knows how to utilize AI in a way that could distinguish you from competitors, then you best consult Tribute Technology, FuneralOne, Tukios or whichever company you rely on for your digital presence and technology.
Of the aforementioned quotes, this article thematically aligns best with K. Eric Drexler’s. He said AI is the “ultimate tool” that will help us “build all possible tools.”
I have no idea whether the real-life versions of Skynet are going to become sentient, subjugate human beings, take over the world, then send Arnold Schwarzenegger look-alikes back in time to assassinate human resistance leaders.
There is still a lot for the masses to learn about artificial narrow intelligence, artificial general intelligence and artificial superintelligence. All I can speak to is how a family member utilized AI to honor his mother, my sister, in a way that I had never experienced before. And this is something all funeral home owners and operators should note, given the current state of changing consumer tastes and wants.