AI-generated obituaries were created without family consent and published on ad-revenue websites, containing errors and causing additional grief to bereaved families during their mourning process.
Multiple websites including BNN, The Thaiger, FreshersLive, and Obitsupdate have been using AI tools to automatically generate obituaries without family knowledge or consent. These sites, many operated from Asia for ad revenue purposes, scrape legitimate obituaries and expand them using generative AI, introducing errors and publishing them with intrusive advertisements. Three specific cases were reported: Bridget Todd's mother Carolyn Todd had an error-filled obituary published on Obitsupdate in July; Chris Mohney's father Paul had his obituary expanded by BNN with false claims about military accolades; and SEO expert Chris Silver Smith's brother-in-law was featured in AI-generated reports on spam websites after being killed in a car crash in Dallas. BNN was operated from Hong Kong before shutting down in May 2024, while other sites continue operating from Southeast Asia. NewsGuard identified over 500 unreliable AI-generated websites by October 2023. The business model involves producing automated content at scale to capitalize on Google search trends and generate advertising revenue from grief-related searches.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI systems that inadvertently generate or spread incorrect or deceptive information, which can lead to inaccurate beliefs in users and undermine their autonomy. Humans that make decisions based on false beliefs can experience physical, emotional or material harms
AI system
Due to a decision or action made by an AI system
Intentional
Due to an expected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed