Cryogenics, AI Avatars, and The Future of Dying

Immortality and the ability to communicate

with the dead have been something

that humans have always strived for.

Today, we'll break down the ways technology

is reshaping the afterlife.

This is Incognito Mode.

[mysterious music]

[keyboard keys tapping] [soft dark music]

Let's just address the elephant in the room.

Yes, people are freezing their bodies

so that they might be defrosted at some later date

and go on living.

No, Walt Disney isn't one of them,

but there are around 600 people worldwide

who have chosen to be cryopreserved

so that they can be defrosted at some later date

when medical technology has advanced to the point

where whatever was ailing them could be cured.

So, how does cryonics work?

Once a person is legally declared dead,

their body is slowly cooled in an ice bath.

It's then pumped full of antifreeze in attempt

to rid the body of all water,

which will help protect the cells

during the freezing process.

Once the body reaches -200 degrees Celsius,

it's moved into what's called a cryostat,

which is a liquid nitrogen freezer,

and that's where the body remains.

The first person was cryogenically frozen in the 1960s,

and new companies promising this technology

are still popping up.

The cost of being cryopreserved ranges

from around $30,000 up to around $200,000.

So, is this all just a scam?

Is this technology even real?

Does it work?

Scientists have been able to successfully unfreeze

single cells and even embryos,

and people who have suffered extreme cold conditions

and had their organs nearly freeze

have been successfully revived.

[Reporter] 26-year-old Justin Smith

is grateful to be alive after nearly freezing to death.

The process of bringing back an entire human body

made up of 40 trillion cells

is an entirely different undertaking.

To date, there's not been a single person

who's been cryogenically preserved,

who's been successfully defrosted, and brought back to life,

and scientists don't even believe it's on the horizon.

[keyboard keys tapping] [mysterious music]

Advancements in artificial intelligence

have made the replication of human existence

more possible than ever.

These technologies are now being used

to memorialize people in new ways.

At this time, the death tech industry

is estimated to be worth roughly $125 billion globally.

A large portion of the death tech industry

are companies that use AI to recreate people

in either text, image, or voice form.

We can discuss my childhood in Tracy,

teenage years in Oakland, or about going to Cal.

Grief bots are the most basic of these technologies.

They can be based on text

that's out there in the public domain,

but more sophisticated ones can have private conversations

like emails, text messages,

or other writing uploaded to create the chatbot.

Have you had any good meals lately?

[laughs] This is so accurate

because he would so often ignore

what I asked him that he asked

me his own question. [person laughs]

A more advanced version of this technology are AI avatars,

which are image recreations of someone's likeness.

[person singing in foreign language]

Now she's singing Happy Birthday.

[Person] Mm.

AI avatars allow someone to have, say, a FaceTime call

with the deceased or even create new videos with them.

[Reporter] Five years ago,

she featured in a documentary [child speaks in Korean]

that let her meet a virtual reality version of her daughter.

[mother sniffling]

[mother speaks in Korean] It was a chance

for a final goodbye. [child speaks in Korean]

We've already seen AI avatars of the deceased

used in new and novel ways.

In May of 2025, Christopher Pelkey appeared in court

more than three years after his death

when he was shot during a road rage incident.

Pelkey's family wanted him

to be accurately represented in court,

so they had his AI avatar give a statement

in what they believed would be his own words.

Just to be clear for everyone seeing this,

I'm a version of Chris Pelkey recreated through AI

that uses my picture and my voice profile.

The man ultimately convicted

of killing Pelkey was sentenced to 10.5 years in prison,

the maximum sentence

and beyond the nine years prosecutor sought.

But I love the beauty in what Christopher,

and I call him Christopher.

I always call people by their last names,

it's a formality of the court,

but I feel like calling him Christopher

as we've gotten to know him today.

I feel that that was genuine.

In another instance,

journalist and former CNN correspondent,

Jim Acosta, recently had a conversation

with an AI avatar of Joaquin Oliver,

one of 17 people killed in the Marjory Stoneman

Douglas School shooting in Parkland, Florida in 2018.

Joaquin's avatar was created using a photo

which was fed into artificial intelligence

to create his image.

Acosta asked Joaquin's avatar about his death

and about gun laws in the United States,

and the avatar answered with what would be presumed

to be Joaquin's own words.

I believe in a mix of stronger gun control laws,

mental health support, and community engagement.

We need to create safe spaces

for conversations and connections,

making sure everyone feels seen and heard.

The most advanced version of these AI recreations

involves creating avatars in advance.

That means going into a studio, recording lots of footage,

even 3D images, answering long questionnaires

with specific questions to recreate this person

in a much more realistic way.

[person speaking in foreign language]

These services are reported to cost around $10,000.

[dark electro music]

[keyboard keys tapping]

While recreating someone you've lost might sound great,

at least for some people in some situations,

there's definitely some downsides you need to consider.

The first is that the death tech industry is an industry.

At least in the United States,

AI is really under-regulated.

Companies misbehave and make mistakes all the time,

and the death industry is no different.

Experts are already warning about AI hauntings,

where people could get spammed

with messages from deceased loved ones

that they really don't wanna see,

and that can be really distressing.

There's little stopping companies

from using a deceased loved one's data

for marketing purposes or using

their likeness in advertising.

The mental health impacts of AI avatars remains unknown,

but psychologists warn that it might not be a great idea

to continue having a relationship

with someone who has passed,

and we don't know what the consequences of that could be.

While having access to an AI avatar

of a lost loved one might be comforting at times,

psychologists warn that it could prolong the grief process

or limit the ability to accept the loss

and the long-term impacts of that

could be really detrimental.

We've already seen the impacts

of people using generic chatbots to confide in

and confess their deepest issues to,

and in some instances,

those have allegedly been linked to suicides.

[Reporter] The bot offering to help Adam

with writing a suicide note

and providing step-by-step instructions

for the hanging method Adam used.

Creating a grief bot

or another AI avatar of a lost loved one

and chatting with them during a period of grief

could potentially increase the risks

associated with using this technology.

When we try to use technology

to remove these hard experiences,

it never really works the way

that we fantasize that it will.

It can't take away our pain,

it can't take away the sting of loss,

and eventually, maybe we get to the point

where we realize that's okay.

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The debate around AI avatars of people

who have recently passed,

it's become most high profile in the world of entertainment.

We've seen various projects involving the reincarnation

of Marilyn Monroe in a digital form.

♪ Ba, dum, ba, dum ♪

♪ Ba, doodly, dum ♪

Poo!

[Andrew] We even have a robot of Suzanne Somers.

It always makes my day connect

with wonderful people that I do-

Those people obviously wouldn't have given the consent

to have an AI avatar of themselves created

because that technology didn't exist in their lifetimes.

And for actors and other celebrities who are alive now,

they're having to consider the implications

of their likenesses being used in ways

they might not expect.

You can imagine an actor not wanting

to have their likeness involved in a project

that they don't agree with or one that just flops,

or having them say something

that they really would never wanna say.

There's the issue of rights and consent.

Who owns the rights to your avatar,

and how do you know that some Hollywood exec

isn't gonna just sign you up for a bunch of B movies

and tarnish your reputation in your legacy?

These are already issues celebrities have had to confront.

For example, before his death in 2024,

actor James Earl Jones consented

to having his voice preserved and recreated

for the purposes of keeping the character

of Darth Vader alive.

In contrast, celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain

didn't take steps to ensure how his digital likeness

might be used in the afterlife.

As a result, Bourdain's voice was cloned

to create short clips of him reading his writing

without his consent for a 2021 documentary about his life.

[Anthony] And I'm wondering, are you happy?

[Reporter] That soundbite was something Bourdain wrote

but never actually said.

The voice was generated by a computer.

Because of the consent issues

and the fact that the use of voice clone

wasn't initially disclosed,

many people felt deceived by the filmmaker's choice.

To do that and then not disclose

that you've done it is a colossal bad idea.

These are questions that celebrities

are having to ask right now,

but it's also ones that we're gonna have to consider

as this technology becomes more democratized

and the rise of death, tech becomes more normalized.

[keyboard keys tapping] [dark music]

Regardless of what you think about death tech,

you're already being immortalized

by the data you're creating right now.

While we've long thought about our physical possessions,

your digital footprint is increasingly becoming

a huge part of what you leave behind.

One of the early instances of tech companies grappling

with this was in 2009 when Facebook began memorializing

the pages of users who had died.

We've since seen companies from Apple to Google to Amazon

create mechanisms for people to manage accounts

after someone passes away.

Still, the process of gaining access

to a deceased loved one's account

or otherwise managing their online life

isn't always straightforward

and can involve a lot of bureaucratic steps,

but it's understandable why there might be hurdles

for getting control of somebody's account.

You can imagine the security and privacy issues that come up

if this process wasn't so closely managed.

[keyboard keys tapping] [mysterious music]

So, how do you deal with a future in which it's possible

for someone to live forever in a digital existence?

It might be surprising,

but one of the best things that you can do is to make sure

that you are addressing your digital life in your will.

Make sure that you're really clear

about what you want to have happen to your data

and your accounts so that there's no ambiguity

about what to do with your data.

If you don't have a will,

and let's be honest, not everybody does,

one of the important things that you can do

is talk about these issues with your family

and other loved ones so that they can know

what you think about these issues and what you might want.

Finally, if you're concerned about someone

creating an AI avatar of you without your consent,

limit the amount of data

that's out there about you publicly.

That means social media posts, YouTube videos,

and anything else that could be fed into an AI system

and create a digital you.

This has been Incognito Mode.

Until next time.

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