‘Eternal You’ Movie Review [Sundance 2024]: A Nightmarish Reality Unfolds In The AI Market Of Death
Photo from the Sundance Institute
From Jeff Nelson
Artificial intelligence is an evolving technology that continues to hold a great deal of mystery in its operation, implementation, and capability, although its short-term impact is already felt. Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck’s Eternal You digs its toes into how AI is revolutionizing the market of death and grieving to terrifying lengths, capturing technology’s staggering advancements, as well as its potentially devastating consequences.
Startups are working towards a world where AI can change how humans interact with grief in the wake of losing a loved one. These companies are generating avatars that allow people to continue speaking with those they’ve lost. Users have varying reasons for trying out such a service, desperately wanting to connect. Eternal You is a documentary that seeks insight into how this moral-gray business could impact our society emotionally, economically, and psychologically.
Block and Riesewieck dissect several different projects standing in various phases of development to varying depths from the perspective of subject matter experts and users from both ends of the argument for or against AI. The filmmakers allow the developers of this technology to speak their piece, but there’s no doubt where they stand on the topic of digital technology’s place in human loss. The film seeks to approach AI from several angles, but there are some missing perspectives here.
In some ways, Eternal You plays out like the cautionary tale of a Black Mirror episode, reflecting on technology that feels so out of reach to the mass market, yet it’s frighteningly relatable to society as we know it. The line between comfort and alarming exploitation in the face of substantial vulnerability is blurred, although we’re able to witness the harmful long-term consequences of toying with the ability to speak with the dead in an AI form. Is this market about moving on or living in the delusion that they never died?
Eternal You unravels a harrowing look at human preservation in the wake of the age of AI, boosted by poignant interviews with users whose grief has been touched by digital technologies. Block and Riesewieck present AI as a slippery slope, where the consequences are considerable and irreversible. It’s a well-timed documentary that captures the uncertainty surrounding this technology and whether our advancements could actually be our downfall.
Rating: 3/5
Eternal You played at Sundance 2024 on January 20th, 2024.
