Grandma, what big AIs you have.

South Korean firm DeepBrain AI offers consumers the possibility of talking to their departed loved ones again through the company’s use of AI video avatars.

DeepBrain’s Re;memory vertical conducts seven-hour, in-person interviews with people with terminal illnesses, or others who want to make sure they’re not forgotten, to gather the information they will share with those they leave behind.

“Re;memory is more than just a memorial hall with photos and videos,” an introductory web page declares. “It’s a place where you can share memories with your passed [loved] ones through an actual conversation.”

Deathics. When one IT Brew reporter saw the Re;memory part of DeepBrain’s booth on the floor at CES ’23, he posted a picture of it to Twitter. Reactions to the tweet were uniformly hostile: responders referred to it as “dystopian,” and implied it was unethical.

In an interview conducted at CES, DeepBrain’s California business development manager Joe Murphy told IT Brew that any ethical concerns over Re;memory’s technology were effectively in the eye of the beholder, and that people would need to make their own decisions on what’s right or wrong.

“That’s a very personal decision,” Murphy said. “Different people, even different cultures, look at death differently.”

Brian Finch, co-chair of Pillsbury Law’s privacy and cybersecurity practice, largely agrees. He told IT Brew that integrating AI technology with end-of-life procedures is so new that there is no “hard-and-fast set of ethics associated with that as of yet.” A more pressing concern for Finch is whether or not the person whose avatar is being generated was capable of giving consent or coherent enough for that choice.

Read more here.—EH

Do you work in IT or have information about your IT department you want to share? Email [email protected].

As a consultant who helps businesses with their software strategies, John Harrison sometimes sees a kind of “speed dating” happen between IT managers and department heads.

But instead of “Are you a pet person?” or “Where’s your hometown?” these sessions have less romantic icebreakers, like:

What do you like and dislike about your current systems?

An applications director (in charge of the implementation of enterprise software) and supply-chain manager (in charge of the smooth operation of sending and receiving), after all, may rarely find themselves in the same room to discuss concerns.

Maybe the supply-chain manager, for example, is struggling with inventory accuracy. With scheduled conversations, the applications team lead can hear about department head headaches, better understand business priorities, and consider updated solutions that support those objectives (like RFID that provides electronic tracking).

“It just engenders that idea that, ‘Hey, I’m here to help you realize your vision and objectives,’” said John Harrison, managing director at the advisory Protiviti.

Information technology professionals must not make a case for upgrades on their own, according to business consultants who spoke with IT Brew. IT leads must create momentum for new tools and software by understanding the day-to-day goals of executives.

“By itself, IT cannot make the case. More often than not, they need to have really strong alliances with the business stakeholders in order to really illustrate and articulate the advantages that going to a more modernized platform can have,” Brett Sparks, senior director analyst at the tech-research firm Gartner, told IT Brew.

Oldies but not-that-goodies. Many big organizations have decades-old technology setups. Even Chuck E. Cheese (as well as the Japanese government) still uses floppy disks.

Keep reading here.—BH

Do you work in IT or have information about your IT department you want to share? Email [email protected].

Today’s top IT reads.

Stat: 98%. That’s the proportion of Carvana’s valuation that was wiped out in the last 18 months—in large part due to the end of historic-low interest rates, which is driving layoffs across tech. (the New York Times)

Quote: “In terms of underlying techniques, ChatGPT is not particularly innovative.”—Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist, on the much-discussed AI program (ZDNet)

Read: It sure looks like chatbots aren’t going to replace professional writers anytime soon. (the Los Angeles Times)