There Are No Girls on the Internet - Bridget's back! And AI obituaries are ruining her life - NEW EPISODE

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

We’re back with an update about what’s been going on with Bridget, and exploring a new low for the use of AI. AI-written obituaries are using technology to compound people’s grief and run roughshod over their privacy: https://www.fastcompany.com/91162990/ai-written-obituaries-are-compounding-peoples-grief Bridget has had it with digital scammers eating away at our humanity, just so they can make a lousy buck.  She has a very special set of skills.  And this time, it's personal.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I'm Michelle McPhee, and I've been unraveling the stream. Cranges Criminal Alliance I've ever reported on, a Mormon polygamist and an Armenian businessman. Multi-million dollar house, Ferraris and Lamborghinis, private jets, a billion dollar fraud. But how long can this alliance last? Tell me what you know. Is somebody coming after me? Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There are no girls on the internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unle. boss creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.

Welcome to There Are No Girls on the Internet, where we explore the intersection of identity, social media, technology, and the Internet. However, if this is your first time ever listening to the show, maybe this is not the episode to start with. I don't know if this episode is going to be representative of the Uvra that we have built over the last four years here at There Are No Girls on the Internet. Generally, the podcast, does not really explore sort of like what's going on personally with me as most listeners. No. However, I have been gone from the show since July and I figured it's time to let you all the listeners in on some of what's been going on. This being a tech podcast, I swear there is a tech angle to

what's been going on with me. But yeah, if this is your first time listening, welcome. We're so excited to have you. This might not be the one to start with. Yeah, I think that's probably good advice for people. It's going to be a little different, but Bridget, it's so nice to have you back here. Thank you for recording, and I got to ask, how have things

been with you? If you watch Bravo's Real Housewives of New York, you know, when Dorenda is asked, like, how are you doing? Not well, bitch. That's how I'm doing. Not well, bitch. Things have been terrible.

Things have been very, very bad. really all aspects of my life, professionally, personally, socially, in all the ways that one can be bad. I am bad. I feel like people listening are like, what the hell is going on with her? Yeah, it's not been a good, I've not been a good summer, not been a good fall. Yeah, I know it's been very rough. And I really commend you for wanting to get back on the mic, talk to listeners about what's been going on with you and that, you know, I know a lot of listeners have written in with concern and expressing their support, which was very nice. So where do you want to start? Do you want to just take us through chronologically or something else? I'll just jump in. So on the 4th of July,

I'll say on the 4th of July, I had a great 4th of July when kayaking celebrated all the stuff that people do, blah, blah, blah. The next day, I got a call from my mom. saying that my dad had had a pretty bad fall down the stairs. People who have been following me for a while, like back in the stuff I never told you days might recall that my dad is disabled, has had a whole host of like chronic health issues. He has had strokes in the past. So this was not wholly new territory for us as a family, but it was, it was so pretty rough news. He had been on the stairs. My mom heard a loud crash, came downstairs. He was on the ground. She called 911. one, the whole works. The day after that was my brother and sister-in-law, they were having a

baby shower in Richmond, Virginia, because they're expecting twins. They since have had these twins, so there are twin niece and nephew out in the world, which is great. So I came home. I was already planning on going to see my family to be at this baby shower. I went to the baby shower, was a lovely time, saw my mom there, my brother there, all my family there. After the baby shower was winding down, my mom got in her car to drive to the hospital to see my dad because he was still hospitalized from that fall. Maybe an hour later, I excused myself from the baby shower, also got on my car, drove to the hospital to meet my mom and my dad. Met up in my dad's hospital room. You know, my dad was, you know, he was in okay condition, like was talking alert, you know,

had had some like medical stuff going on, but like, I was happy to see him and happy to see that he was like doing, I thought like more or less fine. Spent a couple of hours visiting with him in the hospital. My mom also. My brother, soon thereafter, the baby shower wrapped up and he met us at the hospital. So the entire family at the hospital. All in all, it was like a fairly normal day. And I remember thinking, wow, I was so worried about my dad and that fall.

But he actually seems like he's going to be okay. He seemed pretty stable and solid. The next day, I go visit my dad in the hospital. I was surprised that my mom had not made it. So I'm sort of like waiting around for her. Like, where's mom? Where's mom? And I tell my dad that I, you know, I was like, oh, I haven't heard from mom all day.

He's like, that's unusual. You should have your brother go check on her. And he did go check on her. And she had passed away. She died very unexpectedly. The last time I saw her was, we were in the hospital with my dad and I had walked her to her car and I guess I feel sort of grateful that the last thing I said to her I remember the moment like very clearly it's like very

much burned into my memory that the last moment that she had with my dad was quite tender like they hugged and they kissed and you know embraced and that I walked her to her car and that our last moment was was tender like I think I said I love you and I'm grateful that that's what I said as the last thing because I certainly have no idea that that was going to be the last time that I ever saw her alive. You know, that's obviously so so terrible. I think to be with your dad in the hospital, you know, a very concerning fall like he was in the hospital and then to lose your mom unexpectedly like two days later.

That's like a level of tragedy that I think many, if not most people, never experienced so like so much. And so I just wanted to ask for the listeners benefit. Like, was, did your mom have a lot of health problems? Was this like something that was kind of expected? Or was it more out of the blue? Completely out of the blue. My mom, you know, I just turned 70. so, which was a big milestone birthday for her, but in the scheme of things, 70 is quite young.

And so she didn't have like major health complications. I will say the day, the last day that we spent together, the day of my brother's baby shower was like a just a horribly hot day in Virginia. It was like triple digits, you know, I was having difficulty being out and about that day. I remember notably it was like the hottest day of the summer. And it was so hot that I remember thinking like, I wonder if they're going to cancel the baby shower because it's so hot. Unfortunately, it's a long story, but we were unable to do an autopsy. So I will never really know what happened, which, you know,

was difficult for me to accept that. But in some ways, it doesn't matter, I guess. I've come to sort of that conclusion that I'm definitely the kind of person who would really like perseverate, that's the right word, perseverate on the details and the why and the how

and the like, could this have been prevented and that's definitely like a way that I cope. And in some ways it's okay that I, I mean, it has to be okay. I've had to have made peace

with the fact that I'll never know what happened. And, you know, that is how it has to be. But when I say it was unexpected, like my mom, She had, like, a ring camera, even though, you know, we tell how much do I rail against those? My mom didn't listen to the show, so she didn't hear what we had to say about ring. So she had one.

And the last thing that she did was that she called to order delivery, like dinner, delivery, food. And, you know, she calls the order in on her phone, because we now have that. You see the delivery driver come to her door. knock on the door, you know, wait around, knock again, wait around. She doesn't answer. So in between her calling to order food, when she got home after the last night that I saw her at the hospital, she, you know, that passed. And, you know, as horrible as it was, I guess the way that I'm trying to cope is really look for the bright sides and the positive because the situation was so, horrible that it's the only thing I can do. And so, yeah, there are positives, you know,

that she spent her last day with her whole family, you know, she did not appear to have been in any pain. Like it was not like she had a fall. She was in her, in her favorite chair. Like, when we found her at first, you know, it looked like she was just asleep. So she wasn't, you know, It wasn't like she was like face down on the floor or something, which is something that I've sort of been clinging to. But yeah, was very deeply unexpected. I was informed of this by my brother at the hospital. I didn't tell my dad. I ran out of the hospital, one of his nurses, who by the way, a theme of this episode might be like, shout out to nurses.

Nurses are angels because every hero of this story has been a nurse. So they'll get to that later. But yeah, my dad's nurse was like, oh, my God. I, like, collapsed in the hospital hallway, and she held me and helped me get up and was like, she was like, don't tell your dad just go. Rushed home, found her. I don't know if anybody out there has ever found a loved one dead,

but it sticks with you. I guess I'll just put it that way. It's very difficult. It's not something I wish on. I would ever wish on my worst enemy. it's really hard. It's not something you ever, like, forget. Yeah.

I can't imagine how difficult that must have been. You know, I think your focus on, like, trying to focus on some of those positive things that, I mean, I had no idea, but that seems, seems like a positive thing to think about. And, you know, the fact that it sounds like she went quickly without pain I think that is something that

when I've had people close to me die often they haven't had that and I wish that they had so I think that truly is something well spoiler alert because I get to experience both I'm that special

I'm that special that if you've ever wondered like well would I rather have my loved one die unexpectedly without any pain in her sleep very quickly or have them fade away from a disease for which there is no cure slowly bit by bit. I got to tell you both are bad. I'm experiencing both as we speak. Spoiler alert for how terrible the last few months have been. Yeah. So I definitely want to come back to your mom because I've had the opportunity to meet her. She was an amazing person, and I... Love to you, by the way.

Oh. So I definitely want to come back to her. But let's complete the story. So, like, what are you talking about that you've gotten to experience both? Well, as I mentioned, my dad was in the hospital when this happened. And when I left his room, I did not tell him that my mom had died because... It sounds wild to say, but I genuinely...

not believe it. It was not until I saw her that I started to believe it. And believe it or not, even a little bit after I, like, wasn't sure. I was like, maybe something will happen. Once she was, like, in a casket, I was like, okay, she probably, this probably is what's happening. But like that, but like that is how unexpected this was to me. So, you know, I went home, was talking to my family, and we decided that we had to go back to the hospital the next day and break the news to my dad. And as hard as it was for me, my dad had it worse. I really feel for my dad. So we had to break the news to him in the hospital that, you know, he'd seen my mom for the last time.

And from there, it was like something turned off in him. It was like, and maybe people who have been through something like this can chime in and let me know. Because apparently it is not uncommon. But it was like a light somewhere and my dad turned off. And since my mom passed away, my dad has continued to get worse and worse. He, since that day that he was admitted to the hospital on the 4th of July, he has not walked since then. He has been in either a hospital or a rehab facility, back to hospital, back to rehab, back to hospital. He has not gone home.

he has not spent a single solitary moment, not in a facility of some kind, since then. And so just to chime in, so we're recording this on November 1st, and he entered on July 4th. So that's months. And to give you a sense, like, a week before my dad was hospitalized in July,

I had had lunch with him in Fredericksburg, Virginia. And so he got into his car, drove himself the hour and changed away. way to Fredericksburg, walked into the restaurant, we had a totally normal, you know, no flags were raised. It's not like, so my dad went from like a pretty independent person who had chronic health challenges had this fall. And then it was like once, once he heard about my mom, it was, yeah, I just, the only way I can describe it is like something turned off in him. And so he has continued to get worse and worse.

and worse. He is currently hospitalized. I have really spent most of my time since July with him. It's just, yeah, it's just been hard. So, like, I'm still very much in this. And, you know, my mom has passed away. My dad is not doing well. I have been living in kind of various hotels and Airbnb's in Virginia to be with him. Shout out to an amazing nonprofit in Richmond, Virginia, called Doorways, because they provide low-cost, accessible housing that is near where my dad is hospitalized. If not for them, I don't know what I would do. I spent all my money trying to be in Richmond to be with him because he can't walk,

can't really speak, need someone to be advocating for him. And that person is me. And so, yeah, it's been, that's really been my life for the last few months. But I do want to back up because I said that this story had a tech angle. I meant it. Yeah, that's right. You said there was that tech angle. And again, I want to get to hearing about your mom.

But what is the, what's the tech angle in this story? Well, so the day that my mom passed away was July 7th. That was the day that we found her. Less than 12 hours later, imagine my surprise when an obituary is published and goes semi-viral on social media about my mom. Now, you might be asking, oh, did someone in your family write this obituary? like very early on and submit it. That's what we thought, right? And it makes sense that you would be thinking that.

But that is not what happened. So less than 12 hours after we found my mom's dead body in her house, before we had ever even informed my own father, comma, her husband, comma, her next of kin of her death. Imagine my surprise. When a scammy AI obituary pirate piece of shit media, whatever you want to call it, website, publishes a badly written, hacky, full of errors, full of insidious ads, obituary for my mom. This was before we had a

chance to go to the hospital to talk to my dad. This was before we had informed the entirety of our family. This was truly even before I had really like internalized what had happened. This had already gone viral on Facebook. Now, I should say, I would call my mom kind of a local celebrity in our town. My mom was a really respected and distinguished pediatrician. And basically, if you were like a black person in Richmond, she was probably your pediatrician or you knew somebody who she was their doctor. She has been in private practice for decades. And so generations and generations and generations of people have been treated by her. I would say that she is kind of a town hero.

Like when I would go out to dinner with her or go to the mall with her, people, I'm not kidding. And this is not just like the rosy sheen that I'm putting on her because she was my mom. This is like, literally, people would run out of shops to hug her for saving their lives. I've seen this happen multiple times on multiple different outings. People have run from inside shops to hug her and say, you saved my daughter's life. You saved my son's life. You saved my sister's life.

Right? So my mom, was she a public figure? I think it's a little debatable. However, she was somebody that had a profile in my town. I'll put it that way. And so here's what I think happened from the technical side. So my mom was a doctor who was like known for never canceling appointments. She loved what she did.

She was a really hard worker. I think that when waves and waves of appointments started getting canceled, rumors start flying that something has happened to her because the demographic that she serves in Richmond is also a demographic that is like heavy on Facebook. If you searched my mom's name on Facebook, it is like thousands and thousands and thousands of people who are being like, what's going on with my mom, what's going on with her, what's going on with her? Is she alive? Is she okay?

I've done a lot of looking into this. Here's what I think is going on from a technical standpoint. I think that people who are running scammy AI obituary shops online are clogging it when someone's name is enjoying a boost from search. When people are searching for someone's name a lot, when people are using someone's name a lot on social media. And that's how they determine, we're going to cook up an AI generated obituary for this person. And that is exactly what they did. So I'm not kidding. I knew she was gone for less than 12 hours when this piece was published.

And when it was published, it went wildly viral on Facebook to the point where people that I had not spoken to in years, people I certainly didn't tell what was going on, were texting me, sending me the link to the obituary being like, oh, my God, I heard about your mom. I'm so sorry. Right. And so mind you, we hadn't talked to my dad yet. I mean, I guess like, depending on how you look at it, luckily, my dad was not in a position where he could be scrolling his phone. Had my dad had his phone, he absolutely would have heard the news about the death of his wife from Facebook. There's no way that he would not have. The saving grace is that my dad in his state was not able to have his phone and be looking at his phone. Had he had access to his phone, that is how he would have found out about his wife passing away, not from his kids, not from his

family. I have to pause there because like even talking about it now, it makes me want to vomit. It fills me with such rage and disgust for my fellow human that it makes me, I mean, you know, you report on tech harms for four years and then they happen to you and you can't believe the depravity and the depths that people will go for to generate a quick buck online. Yeah, it's truly despicable. I think there are a lot of different perspectives in society. People have different values. but I think one thing that pretty much every human I've ever met has in common is that everybody recognizes that when you lose a close member of your family, that's hard.

And there should be some respect given. And to take that kind of event and just turn it into more SEO chum to drive clicks or whatever the scam was to monetize this event that, to you is like one of the most difficult things you've ever been through. And to them is just like another another data point to monetize. It really is despicable and highlights like the worst of the ways that technology can harm us. This was the worst day of my life was the day that I found my mom's dead body in her house. Every day since then has been a living nightmare from which there is no waking up. And I will not rest until the people who have monetized this day of mine lose everything. This is like, it's fucking war with me.

I will never be over this. It will be, I will go to my grave shaming these people and talking about this and speaking about this. So this is not over by a long shot. I have some names, one of which you'll hear later on. But yeah, I'm coming for all of you people. Hope you're fucking ready. Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guide.

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Highlights are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise. Breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves.

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And we're back. So you said you wanted to circle back to talking about my mom. So let's do that because, anybody who knew my mom, met my mom, ever experienced my mom, will tell you that she was a force. Like, again, this is not me saying this because I'm her daughter, although I do have a special affinity for her, obviously. But my mom was born into abject poverty in rural Virginia as an orphan. She worked in farms, you know, as just like a farmhand, bounced from family to family and foster care, working on a farms in rural Virginia. She was born with nothing. She worked her way up with at the top of her school

in college, top of her classes in med school became probably the top rated pediatrician in our town, right? The day that she died, the week after that, the whole family was meant to be going to Virginia Beach to watch her get a massive award for pediatrics, right? My mom has been on national spotlight. She's been on the Today Show talking about the work that she's done for childhood literacy. She is an amazing person who has had a dynamic and multifaceted life story. Anybody who has met her could tell you what a colorful person she was, what a smart person she was, what a funny person she was, what a warm person, what she was, what a passionate person she was, what an opinion she was. Like, she was a person who lived in full color, right?

The thing that pisses me off the most about this AI obituary that they published about her is that it's so generic and so flat. They say, oh, she was a pediatrician who specialized in children's medicine. Well, what the fuck else would a pediatrician specialize in? That's like saying, oh, he was a firefighter who specialized in flames. Obviously, she specialized in children's medicine. The way that it's written, it's just the most AI generated flat piece of bullshit I have ever read in my life. And it is so deeply offensive to me. If a human was sitting down to write an obituary about my mom, there are so many things that you obviously would have included. The first obituary that was published because there was a handful of them did not include one single detail.

It was all vagaries. Yeah. And, you know, I know we have a lot of younger listeners who maybe have not yet had. the experience of having a close loved one die. And to you, I say, congratulations. Keep writing that wave as long as you can. But it is coming. And when it does, you will realize that obituaries are important.

I don't know. I personally didn't really think much of them until my grandparents passed a few years ago. And I was very close with them. I personally wrote their obituaries. and it was a really meaningful thing for me and I think something meaningful for my family. And it just really, like, it means a lot to have an obituary that does reflect

who the person was in their life. And the sting of having that taken away, it would make my blood boil. Oh, my blood is boiling, my friend. My blood is boiling. And it is even worse that I am not alone. So it turns out that this kind of practice is actually commonplace, and it's been going on for a while.

It has been made worse by the proliferation of AI. Funeral homes have actually been fighting obituary scam, obituary pirates, whatever you want to call it, for 15, 20 years, but it's really taken off with technology. I actually was interviewed for an article in Fast Company after this happened. The article, I'll link it in the show notes, but it's like almost difficult for me to read because when I was interviewed, I was still very much. I mean, I'm still in the thick of it now, but I was like really in the thick of it then.

And in the interview, I feel like I come off as like unwell. And I was unwell. Like I really was, you know, I had just buried my mom. I had, and this was totally unexpected. I was literally sleeping in my dad's ICU room for a month. So, like, his room has a couch in it. I was just curling up on the couch. And that's where I was living for a literal month.

I was dealing with all of his health stuff, talking to doctors every day, trying to figure out how to, you know, my mom died unexpectedly. So trying to figure out all of her, like, estate stuff, her will, like, all of this, like, incredibly complicated stuff, funeral arrangements, stuff that we had never talked about, which we'll get into that in a minute. But I was just struggling. I was on well. So it's almost hard for me to go back and read that article because I'm like, oh my God, like I was really in it. But yeah, when someone is going through one of the most difficult times, for me, it wasn't just one of the most. It was the most difficult time of my entire life. Having there be obituary pirates who are capitalizing off of that and adding to that, I wanted to die.

It just was really hard. And, you know, what made it worse was that the AI generated. obituaries, hit the internet very quickly, and went viral on Facebook very quickly. And so when our family actually submitted a real obituary written by my Aunt Ruth, who did a beautiful job, when that was submitted to the funeral home and put online, for a while, the AI generated obituary still had more reach. Like when you Googled my mom's name plus obituary, the ones that were written by her family with actual information, not to mention, you know, no inaccuracies, because the AI generated ones had inaccuracies, those were not as high up on Google for a time as the

ones that were bullshit. And so, you know, you were talking about how obituaries matter. They matter for so many reasons, not the least of which is, you know, the obituary written by our family had information about the services, information about how you could connect with the family. I go on to these, you know, AI scammy sites. And there are real people who my mom actually knew, leaving condolences. They don't know that that has nothing. Our family didn't authorize that. They didn't put that up, right? And so that's just a logistical reason as to why these are so messed up.

But you're right. Obituaries matter. Obituaries, it matters when someone passes away. The act of writing an obituary is important. And you write them for other people. You write them for humans. You don't write them to generate money. And you don't take away someone's right to mourn their mother the way that they want to do it.

You don't take that away from them. That was stolen from me. Other than my close family and like my close, close circle of friends, I didn't tell anybody my mom passed away. And they all knew. They all knew from that AI bullshit. I can't even express what that feels like. Like I feel like I was robbed of the opportunity to mourn my mother on my own terms. grieving is hard enough. Having to grieve in this digital fish bowl is I can't even describe what

that felt like. I'm still, I'm still not over it. Maybe I'll never be over it. And, you know, I just distinctly remember having this moment maybe an hour after my family met at my dad's hospital room to tell him that my mom had died where it was me, my brother, my sister-in-law, my aunts, my mom's sisters. And somebody had sent one of the AI, I generated obituaries to my aunt. And we all had this moment where we were like, who published this? Who submitted this?

And I don't want to say we were like accusing each other, but it was a tense moment. It was a moment of like who in this very close circle of like friends and family went to the media. And come to find out none of us did. That was just a thing that was taken from us by scammers. And so, yeah, that was a moment on top of the worst moment of my life that we didn't need as a family. We already had enough on our place as a family.

And yeah, the fact that this is a common practice is just unacceptable. Here's a bit from the Fast Company article that I was quoted in. I didn't say this, but this was what the journalist wrote. AI generated obits are now filling the web, marking a new chapter in the quest to monetize grief. many of these sites turning out AI-generated content, exploiting the dead, are based in Asia, and appear to be run solely to generate ad revenue. As I said, my mom was a bit of a, I don't know if I'll call her a celebrity, but like, she was a, she was like a known entity in our town. However, Fast Company also spoke to people who didn't have any kind of public profile for whom these scammy rags still published AI obituaries for. In some cases, the person is not even really dead.

A journalist wrote a piece about the anxiety that she experiences while driving on L.A.'s freeways. And she told CNN that she believes that the spike in online traffic attached to her name from that piece being published is why scammers decided to say that she died on the internet. They're hoping that that little spike in traffic attached to her name means that more people will click on that obituary, which will lead to monetary revenue for whoever's putting that up. But she wasn't dead. In fact, she was sitting in a hospital room helping a friend through surgery when her phone started blowing up because these videos of AI-generated news anchors were talking about how she died in a car crash. She said, I was sad. Reading your own obituary is a surreal experience. After speaking with experts, I was scared for myself, for all journalists, and for our society.

And yeah, I'm also scared. Yeah, it is scary. You know, one of the things that you mentioned that was talked about in some of those articles that you shared ahead of this recording was the idea that these obituary pirates have been doing this for 20 years, maybe a little bit longer. And so it does seem like a good example of the sort of harm that has been ongoing, the sort of tech-enabled harm that has really been like, turbocharged with AI to allow them to churn these out so much faster and more cheaply. Exactly. But even the ones that are not necessarily AI generated are still pretty creepy. Kate Nibbs over at Wired reported on how YouTubers are modifying this practice by just

summarizing obituaries of dead strangers in videos. Somebody was upset enough by this after watching strangers make videos hastily summarizing a good friend's death that they reached out to her. She writes, sometimes these obituary YouTubers promote products in the video description, like a $225 vitamin C cream for sale on Amazon. Sometimes they just list strings of SEO baiting keywords like death, cause of death, die, RIP, what happened? While each channel differs from the next in small ways, there's a unifying aesthetic. Everything looks rushed and careless. There's no hint of emotion or acknowledgement that they're discussing someone's greatest tragedy. And as you said, Mike, this is not new.

funeral homes have been dealing with obituary aggregator sites for 15 or 20 years. This is from Courtney Miller, chief strategy officer at MKJ Marketing, who specializes in funeral services. She says that the site's trawl news articles and local funeral home websites looking for an initial death announcement that has basic details like name, age, and where a service might be held. They then scrape and republish that content at scale using templated formats or today, increasingly, AI tools. So basically these people are just exploiting SEO and like Google trends and things like that. SEO expert Chris Silver Smith says there's a whole new strategy in search rankings, and I believe it's based off of getting information that someone has died, and seeing there's a little spike in traffic, perhaps in a specific region for that person's name,

and rapidly optimizing and publishing articles about the person to get these dribbles of search traffic. Dribbles of search traffic is such a like diminutive, term, but that feels correct here. Like, it's hard to imagine that they're making any sort of serious money off any individual obituary. And I guess it's really like the scale of it that allows this to be a fruitful enterprise for these scammers to take people's lives and flatten them down in this way to almost like turn people's death into a commodity.

Like, what is the business model there? Is it that? Well, it's pretty much exactly that. They just are playing on the surge of interest in keywords related to death. It's like my mom's name. And they just pump out low effort content to try to capitalize on that flow of web traffic. It's really a numbers game. And I think that's why it kind of like has to be so low effort. Because I don't think that anybody was making a lot of money individually from my mom's AI BS obituary. But if you do it for enough people, if you crank them out and crank them out and crank them out and crank them out. Now, in aggregate, you can probably make some money. And obituaries really are big business. A wired piece called The Morbid War over online obituaries from 2021 describes this company, Echo Vita. These people are basically a ring of obituary scammers. So companies like Echo Vita, they take this scam a step further.

So Echo Vita was sued by Service Corporation International, which is like a conglomerate of 1,500 funeral homes. and they allege that the company was scraping details from obituaries written by family members from funeral home websites and just republishing them. Quote, mining people's personal data at the lowest point in their lives is disappointing, a spokesperson for the funeral conglomerate told Wired in an email. So Echo Vita makes money through purporting to connect mourners with flower delivery services or other like funeral services that they then profit from. But wait, I'm sorry, did I give these.

fucking ghoul's permission to profit financially from my mom's death? No, I fucking didn't. I've never talked to these people. I don't know these people. And yet, when I search their scam enterprise website, what do you know? There's my mom's name. There's my mom's information. Next to these like insidious, scammy pop-up ads that are like, oh, for $30, you can plant a tree in honor of my mom. Also, side note, my mom would have hated that. She would have thought that. was so hacky, she would have never approved that. I didn't approve that. Yet on their website, these ghouls are making money off of my dead mother without anybody in my family's permission. So terrible. And like big money, like you said. Right. So according to a piece about another lawsuit

against Eco Vita, the company has an option for people to claim an obituary, right? So I could provide documentation to Echo Vita proving that my mom is my mom. And If I did that, I could then take a cut of whatever profit they make from flowers and candles or whatever else. But I'm sorry, that is just gross. Why should I have to prove to you that I am my mother's daughter, you a stranger, that I have not provided to have anything to do with me or my family? Why do I need to provide documentation to you to prove anything? Who gave you permission to have my mom's name on your scam website? And how generous of them to give you some undefined cut of their chotchky sales.

I'm not even sure that people would actually get the flowers or the tree is actually planted, because according to the Trust Pilot reviews of ECOVita, the flowers that people are sending the money to buy might not even show up, and the company is just like pocketing the money. Here's one review from Trust Pilot. Quote, these are leech companies that take obituaries from legitimate funeral home site and post them on their own sites to profit from. The obituary is often inaccurate.

They are just trying to sell trees, et cetera, without permission or authorization from their families. They just did this to us on the loss of my 14-year-old grandson. Our funeral director has made several attempts to stop this, but always hits a dead in. I have warned everyone we shared our obituary with, and I am writing a letter to the Secretary of State. It's kind of surprising that they are still doing this with impunity,

given stories like that from a grandmother who sounds like she's pretty mad. listening to you. Sounds like you're pretty mad. I wouldn't want to be the focus of that ire. Oh, Echo Vita CEO, Paco LeClerc, your name is going to be on my lips and on my fingers for the rest of both of our lives. I'm going to be on your ass like white on rice.

You will never shake me. My family is over an apology. I am getting that apology. Rest assured. Also, fun facts about EcoVita is like, I mean, you know, Mike, you know I love reading when there's like a review site and somebody leaves a bad review

and the owner comes on to be like, that's not true, you did get those chicken fingers, blah. If you go on to the trust pilot reviews for ECOVita, somebody, I assume it's ECOVita CEO, Paco LaClerc, is arguing back with everybody. So you have all of these people being like, these people are scammers, they are trying to profit off the death of my child,

these people are ghouls. And then you have the owner or somebody replying to each review being like, Like, that's not true. We're a legitimate business. You're lying. If you find yourself arguing back with dozens of people who are accusing you angrily of scamming and making money from their dead family members, give it up. Like, at what point are you, at what point did it take a step back and be like, am I the ghoul here?

Am I the one in the wrong here? So like once you're arguing with multiple people who are grieving, the asshole is you, Paco. Yeah, that does seem like it should be a pretty clear signal. that maybe one needs to take a look at what they are doing if they are engaged in lots of online disputes with grieving family members. Correct. So let's talk more about our friend Pascal Paco LeClerc,

owner of Echo Vita. So LeClerc claims that his company, their mission is virtuous. He's just informing the public of recent deaths at the public service. He says that anybody can publish obituaries on his website for free and says, quote,

in reality, the funeral home should never be the owner of an obituary. The obituary's purpose is to share information with the public. So in my case, is it Paco's job to inform my ill father of the unexpected death of his wife of 40 years? Is it Paco's job? Or is it his family's job? Because I feel like my dad doesn't even know who Paco fucking is and he needs to stay out of it. This idea that he is doing a virtuous public service and that the public has a right to know when someone passes, if you've ever had the misfortune of having to bury a loved one, especially unexpectedly, it is very difficult. And it is nobody's business but the family and the grieving person to decide how and when that information is distributed. What is this idea that when somebody dies automatically the entire public has to be informed? Like, I'm telling you, it is such a callous way of robbing the grieving from what should be an intimate process that they can work out on their own as a family. Nobody has the right to swoop in and inform the public before the family is even ready to do that. And they certainly shouldn't be doing it to make a quick buck like Pascal Paco LaClerc is.

Truly detestable. Yeah, he's a real piece of shit. More after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel,

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That's IHeartadvertising.com. Kingston grew up in an isolated polygamous sect. We were God's chosen kingdom on earth. He felt destined for greatness. So when a swaggering Armenian businessman catapults Jacob into an extraordinary world, he doesn't look back. Ferraris and Lamborghinis, private jets, meeting the president of Turkey.

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Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. Highlights are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves. Their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context and ask the questions everybody wants answered.

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growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast, learn the hard way. Open your free, our heart radio app. Search, learn the hard way, and listen now. Let's get right back into it. So you might be wondering, how did it go to be? Well, before Echo Vita, there was a company called Afterlife that was shuttered after a ruling, a $20 million ruling against them for pirating the obituaries and pictures of dead people in order to profit from grieving families.

I have to say, the judge in this case, federal court judge Catherine Kane, really laid down the law and she said that the reason she was being so intense was because she thought that their behavior was high-handed, reprehensible and marked a departure from standards of decency. And so she was like, I need to like make an example of them so they will never do this again. Get a load of this quote that Paco gave to the globe after the judge's ruling on afterlives. So afterlives, unlike Echovita, Echovita at least uses AI to kind of Frankenstein the obituaries just enough so they sound a little bit different.

So it's like not totally just explicitly copy and pasting. afterlives was just that touching obituary that you wrote for your grandfather, Mike. They would just throw a copy paste on that bad boy, steal a picture of your grandfather from your Facebook, put it up there, add a link to buy a tree that maybe between you and me nobody would ever get, pocket the money and fucking profit and then bounce to the next one. How would you feel about that? Well, sir, I wouldn't like it. No.

So it might not surprise you to find that that is against the law. But after that $20 million ruling, which shuttered afterlife, this is the quote that our friend Paco, stand up guy, gave to the globe, quote, the day we heard that publishing obituaries on the internet similar to that of newspapers and using photos and original text was unacceptable, we immediately stopped operating the company. Homie, why would you think that stealing the photos of dead strangers

is an acceptable way to make money in the first place? And then he went on to start this other company that does the same thing, but a little bit different so that it can avoid copyright infringement. Right? Yes.

Yes, exactly that. And so the new company, ECOVita, it is big business. Paco says that this company has generated $5 million in revenue off of people's obituaries in 2020 alone. Much like After Lives,

the company that was shuttered after that $20 million ruling, ECOVita takes commissions on flowers, candles, and tree sales. The only difference is he's not republishing or stealing the obituaries verbatim and pictures of dead people. He's sort of pulling information from other obituaries. So there's a little bit of grayal area and then profiting off of them.

But still, oftentimes those obituaries are incorrect or have incomplete information. Going back to the AI-generated obituary about your mom, it was shocking how they could cram so little information into so many words. It just really was like so vague. As a little experiment, I asked chat GPT to write me a 500 word obituary for a beloved pediatrician from Richmond. And it was almost identical. That flattening that you talked about, I think, you know, this phenomenon does highlight a lot of the tech stuff that we've talked about for years. And I think one of them is how technology has this tendency to just flatten us. And like you said, for these obituaries, just harvest.

what's available, make up what isn't, and then just churn out some chum. Exactly. One of the people also interviewed for that Fast Company article talked about losing his father and his father had been a service member. And in the AI generated version of his dad's obituary, it is this like, they made up awards that he never won. They made him a more decorated veteran than he was. And he was like, my dad was a great guy, but I can see where the AI tried to like jazz up this story. And I guess, it sort of goes back to what you were saying is that obituaries are for humans. They're for the living to grieve people that we loved. They are a record for how we lived, who we were, how we loved,

who loved us, who knew us. Writing an obituary for somebody is an intimate, special act. It is adding to the public record of who they were. I don't want to live in a world where it's just another way for a tech douche to make money. I don't want to live in a world where my mom's beautiful, colorful, full, dynamic, crazy life is just flattened out so people like Paco LaClerc can get a nickel

in their bank account. That is not the world I want to live in. Grieving and death is hard enough. Absolutely. Like that judge said, who you read from. It violates basic ideas of decency. Somebody ought to do something. Yeah. Well, Paco LaClerc says, quote, I want to use technology to become a disruptor of the industry, meaning the funeral industry. Paco LaClerc, I don't know you. We have never met. I don't want

my mom's death and my grieving process to be a pit stop on your disruption of the funeral industry. I don't give a fuck about your disruption. You have no right. to be exploiting, grieving people using technology. This is what kills me about this person, is that the way that he speaks in these interviews, I would almost respect it more if he was like, yeah, I'm a scammer. It's a scam. If I do it enough times, I make a quick buck.

That's why I'm doing it. It's a financial scam. At least I would be like, okay, he's being honest. The thing that kills me is that because it has to do with technology, he wants to exploit my dead mom and my family for money and also be seen as a titan of industry for doing it. He wants to be seen as a thought leader for doing it. He is a scammer.

If I took a picture of Paco LeClerc's dead family member and screen printed it on a T-shirt and started selling it down on 14th Street, you will call me a scammer, right? That's a scam. If I did that without permission, because it involves technology, he believes that it is some kind of a disruption

as opposed to what it is, which is a violation. And I refuse to live in a world where somebody can exploit me and my mom and my family for money for their financial gain against my will without my permission and also have the gall to see himself as a goddamn visionary, not on my watch. So again, this is not going to be the last time we talk about Paco LaClerc. I am your new biggest fan. We're going to talk about you every fucking week. Get used to it. All right, Bridget.

So how do you want to land this plane? You want to circle back to your mom. You want to talk about your dad. You want to share what you've learned about going through this process that might help listeners who are either going through it or maybe aren't going through it yet, but see it coming down the pipe. Oh, my God. What can I say? I would say, everybody listening to this, if you have parents in your life, loved ones, older folks, my mom died on a. unexpectedly and none of her affairs were in order. I'll put it that way. And it's made everything

much harder. And yeah, I would say if you are avoiding a tough conversation with your mom or your dad or your aunt about what their end of life plans look like, have the conversation because you're going to be dealing with it one way or the other. One route is it's going to be hard regardless. So you've got to decide if you want to have that conversation and get a fair to. an order now and have it be regular hard or hard hard. So that's one. So end of life care plans, whatever needs to be arranged. I really implore people to make those arrangements while you can because it's very difficult to make them otherwise taken from me. Yeah, I would also say, like, I am still very much in it. If I sound not like myself, it's because I am not myself. And I don't

know if myself is ever coming back. This might be a permanent change for me. And yeah, it's just as hard as everything was, I think the feeling of having my grief be exploited. Like, I don't think I ever really got to privately grieve my mom and grieve my dad, to be honest with you, and like, really sort of grieve what happened to my family. There's like been a, a real lack of intimacy. I can't quite describe the feeling of being in like a digital fish bowl while you're going through something as hard and intimate as grief. It was really invasive. I have to say like I really kind of shut down, you know, when those AI obituaries hit social media, I was not yet ready to talk about what was happening. And I had to talk about it because people were

texting me about it and asking me about it because of these obituaries. And so I didn't even want to post my own kind of private tribute to my mom because of all of this. I really still haven't because the time that I would have done that, I was dealing with this, right? I was like trying to find where these AI obituary pirates were based and trying to get things taken down off of the internet and all of that, right? So I felt very exposed. and it was very hard. I am still very much in it. So this is not the sort of like ending of like,

and now everything's okay. Everything is terrible for me. And I don't know when it's going to get better. But I would say the thing that I have learned from all of this is that when we talk about things like AI, it really does matter, right? Like obituaries matter. Some things are for humans.

Some things are, there are things that connect us to our humanity. There are things that connect us to the experience of being human. All of us is going to die. I'm so sorry to say this, but everyone listening right now, if you have not already, you are going to be burying a parent or someone that you know and love. And that is a universal. That is a thing that connects us and makes us all human. And so we got to decide whether this thing that connects us to our humanity

is a thing that we are going to allow tech companies and tech leaders to exploit to make money for themselves, against our will. And I think that this is, I am, I am, if I have ever put a line in the sand, I am doing it now, we have to fight this. Nobody wants to live in a world where when you lose somebody, this is acceptable, let alone commonplace. I will not stand for it. I don't think any of us should stand for this. Nobody deserves to live in that world. That is not a world that I want to live in. All right. All right. Well, so are we going to be back here again next week to talk about Let's see, what's up next on the agenda? Paco LeClerc.

I'll say this. Pascal, Paco LeClerc, get in touch with me. I want to hear from you. I want to talk to you. I know I'm going to be on your radar soon. However, if you come to me, we can deal with this. I'd have you on the show. We can talk, whatever you want to do.

But this is sort of your window. I'm going to be a problem for you. Mark my words. If anybody knows him, you can send him this epic. episode, I'm going to be a problem for you one way or another. Make it easy for yourself by getting in touch with me. I'll just leave it there. So yeah, Bridget, thanks for coming and recording this. I know listeners will, I don't want to say be happy to hear from you given the subject matter, but listeners have been asking, and so it's, and I know it was difficult, but I do really hope that, I don't know, recording this episode maybe helps you start to feel a little bit. normal. You know, you mentioned that you don't know if you're ever coming back and, you know, we're always changing all the time and something like this, I'm sure, would profoundly change a person, but you'll get through it. And I hope that, you know, we can all get through it

together. And I know you're not planning, we're not coming back into regular production right now, but hopefully we'll get back there when you're ready. Yeah. Thanks for going on this journey with me, Mike. My mom loved you. And there were so many things about your mom. I maybe got to know like 1% of things about your mom. But the first time that we met, you know, this is the public health nerd in me.

We talked about childhood lead exposure because that is some research that I did while I was in grad school. And it turned out that throughout her career, she had worked with the state of Virginia or the Virginia Department of Public Health to really advocate for and get enacted a set of programs to reduce the prevalence of childhood lead exposure for kids in the state of Virginia,

which is so important. And, you know, I'm sure that that may be a huge difference in the lives of hundreds of thousands of children. So, you know, just one little detail of this amazing woman. And I really feel grateful that I got to meet her. I thought you were going to tell the egg story. So like Mike knows I love eggs. I'm obsessed with eggs.

And my mom also really loved eggs. And we go to dinner. It was like, I think it was just, was it you, me and her? We were at dinner. And she ordered like 10 plates of devil tests. They were good. And she just kept ordering more plates of deviled eggs. And we kept eating them.

We just kept eating eggs. I was in heaven. I didn't think anything was weird because I love eggs and I know my mom loves eggs. So like, have you not said something? I was like, what do you mean? It's not normal to eat 12 deviled eggs in a city. God, my mom also was, I don't want, if it's just like a free for all with me telling stories of my mom, I could do it for my dad too. but like she really was like a great person.

She had a great laugh. I, there was, God, I would kill to hear my mom's laugh again. Like it was like music. She had a really, and she was easy to laugh. That was my favorite quality about my mom is that she was really smiley, easy to laugh. It's something I aspire to. And I hope it's something that I carry in her. And she, another thing about her is that she loved her granddaughter.

It is such a tragedy that she didn't. not get to meet her newest grandkids. She goes my brother and his wife had twins, so there's two new ones out there, but she had a really special relationship with my niece. And she spent a lot of time with her, and my niece will laugh in a way that my mom did that kind of gets me. I see a lot of my mom in my niece, and she's only four, but she'll say things or she'll laugh in a kind of way. And I really, it's like almost scary how I can see. my mom shining through my niece and I hope she, I know what sounds weird. I hope she haunts me. I just like would do anything to just talk to her like just one more time. So yeah. Like,

I know people have all different kinds of relationships with their family, but, you know, it's hard. It's very hard to lose them. And whether, whether you lose them because they pass away, or you lose them because they're not in your life or another reason or whether you lose them because they're like my dad dealing with dementia and you've kind of lost them even though they're still here. It's just so hard. So, yeah, I hate to end it on a bummer, but this is what it means to be a human. And everybody has to go through this. I'm not the first person to go through this. People listening will all go through this in some capacity.

And, you know, as hard as it is, we don't have to be. have to tolerate it being made harder in these ways that pull us apart from who we are as humans. Like, this is human, this is grief, it's ugly, it's horrible, it's messy. Already, it doesn't also have to be a way that we get exploited. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoati.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangooty.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd.

It's a production of IHeart Radio and unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy.

Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to date. David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes.

Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where SportsSlyce comes in. I'm Timbo, and every episode we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the biggest moments in sports and giving you the real story behind the headline.

And we're going straight to the source, the athletes themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions in the moment, and the stuff nobody gets to hear. Listen to Sports Slice on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Sliced Life 12 in the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Life is full of hurdles. So how do you keep going? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we're talking with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness

from professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions about the challenges that shape them and the mindset that keeps them moving forward. At our level, at this scale, being able to fail in front of the entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can do anything. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. I'm Michelle McPhee.

And I've been unraveling the strangest criminal alliance I've ever reported on, a Mormon polygamist and an Armenian businessman. Multi-million dollar house, Ferraris and Lamborghinis, private jets, a billion dollar fraud. But how long can this alliance last? Tell me what you know. Is somebody coming after me? Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged.

It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the I-Hard Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.