100-year-old widow reacts to watching AI video of husband

A 100-year-old woman in Argentina reacts as an AI-animated photo of her late husband moves more than 30 years after he died.

An elderly woman in Argentina is remembering her late husband in a new way, after her grandson shared a video of him made with artificial intelligence.

The viral TikTok video shows the 100-year-old woman overwhelmed by emotions as her grandson shared the AI-generated video with her. The augmented clip is a close up of the man, who passed away more than 30 years ago, smiling and blinking.

Martin Garchtrom, who goes by the username @marto.com.ar on TikTok, told Storyful that his grandmother Sati always talks about her late spouse, Jose.

“She is in love like the first day,” he said. “On a small table in her living room, she has a picture of him. So I decided to tell her the process of how we can create a video from that photo. First, I told her, ‘I’m going to take a picture of him with my cell phone.’ Then I said, ‘I’m going to transfer this photo to the computer and we’re going to make it come to life’.”

The viral video showed Sati’s disbelief as she watched the AI footage with tears.

“Oh my God, I need to sleep tonight!” she said. “I love you, Jose. We loved each other. I can’t believe it.”

AI being used to help with grief

AI is increasingly being used to grieve and even communicate with departed relatives and friends. As the technology becomes increasingly sophisticated, people are experimenting with it to create an altered version of their loved ones beyond the grave.

In 2024, Ana Schultz told CNN that she was using Snapchat’s My AI feature to communicate as her late husband, Kyle, whenever she needed cooking advice. She did this by customizing the feature to look like him.

“Now when I need help with meal ideas, I just ask him,” she said. “It’s a silly little thing I use to help me feel like he’s still with me in the kitchen.”

Richard Khoury, president of the Canadian Artificial Intelligence Association (CAIAC), believes advancements in AI make impersonating dead people possible, but not entirely truthful.

“When it comes to recreating a real person … what will be missing is my memories, my ideas, my personality,” he told CTVNews.ca in a 2023 interview. “It’s not so much as an AI problem (but) a model documentation problem.”

Khoury says because AI needs to be trained by people and gathers data to inform its responses, the identical recreation of a loved one is near impossible.

In 2022, Amazon’s Alexa announced that it might replicate the voice of family members, including those who had died. A representative with the company said at the time that the feature was meant to build greater trust in the interactions users have with Alexa, by putting more “human attributes of empathy and affect.”