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When gone isn’t goodbye
Kim Komando
🕯️ This is very personal.
An AI company reached out to me recently with an interesting offer. They’d take the photos, videos and voice recordings I have of my mom and use them to create an AI version of her. Not a slideshow or tribute video. Something interactive. When they were done, I could talk to my AI mom and have it talk back to me.
My mom passed away after a five-year battle with pancreatic cancer on Sept. 19, 2021. I say a prayer for her every morning when I wake up, and for my father, too. I know they’re reunited in heaven.
That photo above is my college graduation. I love that my parents are holding hands. As a prank, they brought me an AT&T T-shirt and balloon because I was interviewing for a job. Now you know it’s in my blood.
After my father died, my mother moved in with me when I was 27, and we became more sisters than anything else. When Barry asked me to marry him, I said, “You do know that Mom and I come as a set.”
I miss her every day. My heart still aches. I’m pushing back tears now writing this. I talk to her like she’s in the room, sometimes pointing out a great sunset or telling her she was right about the throw pillows. There really are too many on the couch.
🧠 A memory or a machine?
The idea of hearing her voice again feels comforting and frightening at the same time. Could I sit across from a screen and listen to her give advice or make me laugh with her great one-liners? Would it feel like a gift or a ghost?
This isn’t sci-fi. It’s real, right now.
These digital recreations, often called “deathbots,” use artificial intelligence trained on someone’s personal data to bring them back in a virtual form. Through them, some families talk to parents, spouses, even children who are no longer here.
In one case, a journalist interviewed an AI recreation of a school shooting victim. In China, companies offer this service as part of the grieving process.
🧬 The rise of generative ghosts
Use Guest mode in Chrome: Handing your computer to someone else? Ditch Incognito and go with Guest mode. Unlike Incognito, it’s a totally blank profile, so users won’t see your bookmarks, saved passwords or browsing history suggestions. To access it, click your profile icon in the top right and select Open Guest profile.
⌚ Keep your Apple Watch screen awake longer: If the display goes dark too fast, press the Digital Crown and go to Settings > Display & Brightness > Wake Duration. Change it to Wake for 70 Seconds. Now, when you tap the screen, it’ll stay on long enough to actually finish what you’re doing.
⚡️ 3-second tech genius: In Gmail on desktop, you can change how closely emails are spaced in your inbox. Go to Settings > Density and choose Default, Comfortable or Compact.
🥕 Musk’s trillion-dollar carrot: Tesla’s board dangled a “bribe Dad to stay home” pay package that could make Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire, but only if Tesla’s value jumps from $1.1T to a wild $8.5T. If it works, he pockets 423M shares worth $143B today, plus keeps steering Tesla into robotaxis and humanoid robots.
⌨️ Type faster on Windows 11: Cut down on typos with built-in autocorrect. Go to Settings > Time & language > Typing and toggle on Show text suggestions when typing on the physical keyboard and Autocorrect misspelled words. Works in Word documents, Microsoft Teams and most third-party apps.
🖼️ Convert HEIC to JPEG on Mac: Photos from your iPhone are often saved as HEIC, which keeps quality high and file size small. The catch? Not everyone can open them. To convert, just drag the photo out of the Photos app and drop it onto your desktop. It’ll automatically copy as a JPEG.
🌪️ Turn on emergency alerts: Your phone can warn you about severe weather or local threats. On Android: Go to Settings > Notifications > Advanced settings > Wireless emergency alerts and toggle on Allow alerts. On iPhone: Go to Settings > Notifications, then under Government Alerts, switch on Emergency Alerts and Public Safety Alerts.
🏈 Fantasy football goes AI: This season, fantasy nerds are swapping gut calls for algorithms. They’ve built custom AI agents that crunch real-time data from ESPN, track injuries and even “scout” rivals by analyzing past moves (paywall link). Hey, this could be the start of smarter drafts and fewer Sunday meltdowns … if the bots actually deliver.
📚 Reading help on Kindle: Struggling with long pages? Kindle has a special font that makes words easier to follow. Open any book, tap near the top and select the Aa icon. Under Font > Font Family, choose OpenDyslexic. FYI: You can also adjust Boldness and Size here to suit your eyes. Cool, right?
You might be paying for subscriptions you don’t even remember. Rocket Money tracks them all and helps you cancel what you don’t need. The first time I used it, I saved $435. Give it a try and see how much you save!
🍲 Not sure what’s for dinner? Tell a chatbot what’s in your pantry. I prompted: “I have rice, canned beans, onion, garlic, cumin and olive oil. What can I make?” It came back with two options: Simmer everything with broth for a bean-and-rice stew, or keep it dry and pan-fry for a burrito filling. Same ingredients, totally different meals.
📱 Talk to the dead: By 2030, visiting graves will be outdated. A Cambridge researcher predicts AI avatars of dead loved ones will be in our phones, ready for conversation 24/7. From Replika chatbots to funeral apps that let you “attend” your own service, the “digital afterlife industry” is creeping in. Btw, I’m going to share a story about this with you here on Sunday and ask for your advice.
🌍 Fly in Google Earth: Did you know Google Earth has a free built-in flight simulator? Download Google Earth Pro on desktop and launch it with Ctrl + Alt + A (Windows) or ⌘ + Option + A (Mac). Pick your aircraft and starting point (or an airport), then take off. You can fly using either a mouse/keyboard or a joystick.
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🤳🏻 Instagram finally has an iPad app: It’s different from the phone version. The app opens straight into a feed of Reels, with a new Following tab to see posts in chronological order. Comments show beside videos, and the DM page displays your inbox next to chats. Download it here, and drop me a follow for more tips.
🤖 Murder chic: Shein accidentally used an AI model that looked exactly like accused murderer Luigi Mangione to sell shirts. The listing sold out before Shein yanked it offline, blaming a “third-party vendor.” Yikes.
✍️ Add a signature in Gmail: Go to Settings > See all settings > General > Signature. Click Create new, give it a name and type in details like your contact info and job title. You can also insert an image of your real signature. Then choose whether it appears on new emails, replies or both. Scroll down and hit Save Changes.