The death of Nick Hungerford - and the ‘ghostbot’ he made to guide his daughter’s future

Could the fintech entrepreneur’s revolutionary bequest become a model for posthumous parenting?

Technology entrepreneur Nick Hungerford with his wife Nancy and their daughter Elizabeth. Nutmeg / PA

When fintech entrepreneur Nick Hungerford was given a devastating cancer diagnosis, his prime thought was to ensure that his two-year-old daughter Elizabeth would remember him.

The 43-year-old, who died this week from a rare form of bone cancer, used his time to ensure his legacy would live on for his daughter through his creation of an avatar that will support her in the years to come.

The co-founder of digital wealth management company Nutmeg spent the months following his diagnosis writing letters and messages and has used artificial intelligence to create videos of himself answering personal questions for her.

Just days before his death he spoke about the steps he had taken to create memories of himself for his child.

“It’s not the pain or fear of death that worries me most, it’s leaving my wife and my toddler daughter,” he wrote in The Telegraph.

“Elizabeth is just two-and-a-half, and she will have to grow up without me. The thought of missing her first day of school, of not giving a speech at her wedding, buries me with emotion.

“I wanted to see her grow, witness her first tummy rolls, meet her first boyfriend. Selfishly, I also wanted to shape who she became.

“Elizabeth is too young to have active, internal memories of me, but I have done everything I can to show how much I love her. I’ve written letters and messages to be given to her in the future, and used an AI website to video myself answering hundreds of personal questions, so that one day she will be able to log on and 'talk' to me to find out exactly who I was.”

Fifty years from now, post-mortem avatars could be as common as an Xbox

Mr Hungerford is not the first to use AI in this way, which is a growing trend among people wanting to create lasting memories.

Simon McKeown, a reader in animation and post production at Teesside University, launched Preserved Memories, which combines state-of-the-art gaming technology, voice synthesis and big data streams – such as social media, government databases and health records – to create a synthetic digital life of a person.

He believes that in 50 years' time, this kind of technology will be seen in a similar way to how the Xbox or Playstation is seen today.

“Using emotion-sensitive human-computer interaction, our artificially intelligent participants continue to acquire ongoing knowledge long after their death – they evolve digitally and do not die,” he said.

“This life form will be up to date and informed of your daily activities through GPS, Wi-Fi, health and fitness tracking, consumer records and much more. They will know if you have passed your exam, driving test, flown on holiday, bought new shoes, ditched your boyfriend.

“They will know what you tell it on social media and also by the constant tracking that occurs every day.

“Our prime data feeds mean digital participants instantly know what you have done and can sense your physical mood and excitement.”

Experts foresee families using VR to jointly visit a lost loved one

Earlier this year, Seoul-based DeepBrain AI demonstrated its "Re;memory" service at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

For up to £20,000 ($26,000) it can recreate family members, from their face to their voice and physique, so people can continue to talk to a version of that person.

Artur Sychov, chief executive and founder of Somnium Space, a version of the metaverse, created Live Forever after the death of his father.

He believes that once enough data, including voice and video recordings, is available, people can upload them to a computer and envisages families in future being able to take a tour in VR together to visit a relative.

Mark Lee, a professor of artificial intelligence in the School of Computer Science at Birmingham University, told The National he thinks that so-called ghostbots will become more common.

“There is a new generation of networks and by using large amounts of languages, images and videos and we are able to create really convincing artificial intelligence, we are going to be seeing more and more of this,” he said.

“Using this to remember a loved one is perfectly reasonable as long as it is transparent and honest. We need to teach the general public about what AI is and what it is capable of and the dangers,” Prof Lee said.

In February 2021, genealogy site MyHeritage released a new service called DeepNostalgia, which allows users to animate still photographs of late relatives so they smile and blink.

Since the launch 78 million photo animations have been created.

“Ghostbots are digital reincarnations of deceased persons, sometimes known as post-mortem avatars,” Edina Harbinja, a reader in law at Aston Law School, Aston University, who specialises in emerging technologies, told The National.

“This emerging genre of services or products attempts to replicate the appearance, voice and/or personality of a deceased person after their death, primarily using machine-learning techniques or AI, either rule-based systems or deep learning, but more recently also generative AI.

“Last year, a metaverse world, Somnium Space, developed a Live Forever option which allows a virtual version of a person [avatar] to become 'eternal' and communicate with loved ones after death. The founder says the amount of data they potentially could collect in the metaverse is 100 to 300 times more than the data collected through a phone. This includes data about how user's fingers, mouth, eyes, and entire body move.

“In terms of popularity, it is difficult to say, since a lot of these services have been developed commercially, as paid-for services, and some of them as a result of personal distress or wishes. The uptake anecdotally remains low, but it is not difficult to imagine that this may change quite soon with the development and availability of AI more generally.”

Rise of AI raises ethical concerns

British psychologist and computer scientist Yvonne Rogers, who is director of the Interaction Centre at University College London, told The National it is considered socially acceptable to create ghostbots now but it does raise ethical concerns.

“It is feasible to construct videos using AI and previous videos/texts from someone relatively easily now,” Prof Rogers said.

“A few years ago a young AI researcher called Eugenia Kuyda, who was also the founder of the popular avatar app Replika, lost a close friend in a car accident. He was only in his 20s. She did not want to lose his memory, so she gathered all of the texts he had sent over the course of his life and made a chatbot from them.

“The chatbot was programmed to respond automatically to text messages so that Eugenia could talk to her friend as if he were still alive. It responded to her questions using his own words.

“At the time a lot of people thought this was creepy, especially since he was not aware that his texts were being used in this way and he had not given consent. However, she argued it was comforting to her and helped her with her grief.

“Nowadays it might be considered more socially acceptable by more people to do this, especially if someone gives their permission to having their texts, videos and emails mashed up in this way in the form of a “pre-death digital agreement”.

“I think for Nick Hungerford, it was perfectly acceptable to create videos for a range of topics being answered by him as an avatar.

“The unanswered question is would it be upsetting for his daughters every time they watch it to know he is dead but appears alive? Since they would not be watching the generated videos of him to deal with their grief but would be watching the videos of him as if he was still alive.”

More regulation is needed to protect families

Dr Harbinja believes there needs to be more regulation.

“Emotional distress may result from these services if relatives of the deceased become psychologically dependent on a ghostbot and unable to move on from their grief. Also, ghostbots, especially where the service is on the face of it free to the user, might well be used to market goods or services to surviving relatives or heirs,” she said.

“The vulnerability invoked by grief and memory might make undue influence or deception relatively likely. Subliminal messaging or product placement might also feature in the business models.

“There is also potential harm to the deceased's antemortem persona, ie, distortion of their image, impact on their autonomy if they didn’t have control over the creation of ghostbots and the question of post-mortem privacy, ie, the ownership, collection and use of the deceased’s data.

“In terms of law, the regulation is lacking at the moment. In the EU, the upcoming AI Act will regulate services such as these. However, as these would not be classed as high-risk systems under the emerging law, transparency will be the most significant obligation of the ghostbot providers. This includes, for example, making sure the living person is warned that they are communicating with a bot/machine.”

Last June, Amazon announced it was working on a future version of Alexa that will be able to mimic the voice of dead relatives.

It launched the new technology at its re:MARS conference in Las Vegas where viewers saw a child ask a late relative to read a bedtime story.

Before his death Mr Hungerford launched the charity Elizabeth’s Smile in his daughter’s name to provide support to other children who have lost a parent to terminal illness.

His hope is other children will have the same opportunity to shape their knowledge of their loved one.

Jeff Kimball, president of Elizabeth’s Smile, told The National the charity was not presently planning on developing AI for the youngsters it is helping.

“Our charity at present doesn’t have any plans to engage in this as there are companies doing this work now, so we are directing our resources on providing support where there currently isn’t any,” he said.

For Mr Hungerford his wish is for youngsters to continue remembering their parents.

“Children need honesty,” he wrote.

“People don’t wish to speak ill of the dead, so many bereaved children grow up thinking their late parent was a superhero. Which is never true, and is also unhelpful. I hope Elizabeth will hear all about the silly things that I did, and they will make her laugh and smile.

“She is always smiling – which cheers everyone up – and I am determined that smile won’t stop after I have gone.”