The death of a loved one is always painful, but probably none is as painful for a father or mother as when it is a child. In this case there was a 91 year old woman, from the Chinese town of Liaoning, whose son died six months ago from a rare type of cancer. Her family, taking into account his age and the fact that he suffers from a heart problem, did not want to tell him the news for fear of how it would affect him and his grandson, son of the deceased, created a video with technology deepfake to make the woman believe that her son was still alive.
Deepfake technology uses artificial intelligence tools to imitate another person's image and voice. It's not new, but the latest technological advances in AI make it increasingly easier to create them, often for the purpose of perpetrating financial scams. But in this case the intentionality couldn't be better.
According to the South China Morning Post, the grandson, surnamed Sun, had been taking his father to various hospitals in China and abroad trying to find a cure, without success. He had been avoiding facing the pain of his death, but to create the video he had to review photographs of his father to find the ones that could be used by AIsomething that also made him face the duel he had tried to avoid.
Since the family did not want to inform the grandmother of her son's death, they told her that he was being treated in a prestigious hospital in Beijing and that I couldn't return home. Also that cell phones were not allowed in the hospital, which prevented them from talking on the phone. So, The grandson assured him that he would travel to Beijing to record a video and show him.
Sun used face swap technology to record himself pretending to be his deceased father. He also had to imitate your tone of voice in the recording and, when he had the video ready, he first showed it to another member of the family so that they could verify the resemblance and naturalness of the video.
In the recording, the supposed son explained to him that the hospital could not cure his illness, but they could control it, which forced him to remain in Beijing. and that he was fine. According to SCMP, the grandmother's poor vision also helped convince her that she was seeing her living child.
This story has come to light after Sun shared a video on the platform Douyinwhich is what it's called TikTok in China, which has been played more than 5 million times.