Author: Robert Duffy

I was bored, so I cranked up an AI-generated version of the 17th Earl of Sussex. Just to chat. It didn’t go so well.

I am shocked, sir, at your lack of propriety!

Well, we’re just more relaxed about things these days than you are.

Are you eating out of a bowl, as you sit at your desk? Is this any way for a gentleman to dine?

Me, with half a mouthful of Ben & Jerrys: What, you want I should dress up to eat rocky road?
What is this…rocky road?

It’s good, you should try some.

Call your servant to fetch it.

You gotta get it yourself. You want it, go get it.

Barbarism! What is this place?

My office. You know what? You’re boring. Deleted.

I’d been working on a model of my Dad, so I decided to run it, just for the hell of it.

Hey Dad, check this stuff out. This is a laptop computer. Can you believe it?

A computer?

Everything you used to have in your office in those tall five-foot cabinets with the spinning tape reels? All in this little silver box. Hell, on this silver tablet. More hell, on my freaking wrist.

Dad stares blankly. It doesn’t seem to register.

Dammit, incomplete model. Delete this rendering.

The new AI generators let you render people up now, in full, three-dimensional form, standing right in front of you. But it depends on how much information you have about them. Render up Boudica, you’re probably not going to get a lot of great conversation out of her, but render your great-grandfather, based on all the archival information available about him, and you get closer to something that can really mess with your head. That’s the beauty of it.

I decided to try the other side of the family. But this time, be complete. Model this one on actual family files—not those half-remembered fantasies I used for rendering Dad. I didn’t have much on him anyway. Obviously. He, uh, deleted too soon. But thanks to that, I got a lot more on Mom.

Yeah! Let’s AI her up into a high-fidelity ultra-real holographic projection that’ll shock my eyeballs and cause my heart to rip itself loose and drown itself in my bowels. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna AI her in the bloody fur coat.

I’m supposed to do this. This is therapeutic.

I accessed everything—emails, newspapers, court files, and I cranked her out.

And there she stood. Glamorous, beautiful, statuesque, a tall blonde woman wrapped in luxurious mink fur. She wore that same coat into court one day, I swear. Just to make a statement.

She smiled at me, and I felt myself wither. And I just had to look. Even though I told the model not to include that detail, I still had to look.

And yes, there it was. I caught a glimpse when the ermine trim of her coat drifted open. The ugly black handle of the skinning knife.

At this point, you either ask your questions, delete the projection, or leave them there paused like 3D wallpaper. I’m still deciding.