BecomeMe

In late December 2023, Beth Mazur passed away, and several fake artificial intelligence-generated obituaries about her and Brian Vastag appeared in Google search results. These fake obituaries caused confusion and concern among their friends and colleagues, as well as their community. The websites that published these fake obituaries had strange names and contained a constant stream of articles on various topics, including deaths of people around the world. Some of these sites contained inaccurate information, such as the date or location of the memorial service. Aggregation sites regularly outrank real funeral homes that work with grieving families. The fake obituary writers appear to have used artificial intelligence to create obituaries for different people who died from different causes. Mazur and Vastag also experimented with generative artificial intelligence tools in their final months.