Eternal You Review: The Virtual Stairway to Heaven

Eternal You wants to warn of the dangers of human-aping AI, but is largely a toothless exercise in headshaking, with little interrogative instinct.

Well, the future is here, and on the evidence of Eternal You, our interest in questioning technology has waned to a point where even a purported critique comes with the slick filed-down edges of a corporate advertisement. (Speaking of which, this writer is being subjected to a glut of cinema adverts for a certain search engine’s AI function with increasing and alarming frequency, but we digress.)

Eternal You is one of a number of recent films on the topic of new technologies, all of which fail to burrow into the capabilities of these developments. What starts off as an exposé of the people and processes behind this tech only ends up smoothing audience concerns with polished presentation, and a reticence to deeply explore the ethical and practical implications that result. The Social Dilemma was only a middleman to ideas and thinkers that do a far better job of exploring technology’s side effects in their own work.

Meanwhile, Eternal You premiered at last year’s Sundance alongside the similarly-themed Love Machina, and both were noted for their lack of bite on their chosen topic. Love Machina was a largely uncritical look at how new tech attempts to recreate a dead person’s consciousness in a humanoid robot. Eternal You is more concerned with examining the people behind the tech, but Moritz Riesewick and Hans Block’s documentary lands no killer blows against them.

A surprising number of AI companies offer online avatars of recently deceased people, with whom their loved ones can interact. Eternal You sits down with some of the users of this technology to see how it works, and intersperses these scenes with contributions from experts, and some of the founders of the companies involved. As we watch a young man named Joshua text back and forth with a bot that has been fed data to imitate his late fiancée Jessica, the idea seems harmless enough. This could be useful as a coping mechanism, until you remember this is a self-medicated response to grief. To give the directors their due, there is a disconnect (wilful or otherwise) between the glossy corporate presentation that Eternal You replicates (Unblemished cinematography, tasteful score, talking heads interjecting with their thoughts) and the soullessness of the products being used. 

It becomes abundantly clear early on that these products are being unleashed on the market before being thoroughly tested on a practical level, let alone being vetted for their ethics. The apps feed data back to the user based on the voluminous information they’ve been trained on to mimic human interaction, but this can easily backfire. When a woman named Christie messages an AI version of her late boyfriend, she asks what heaven is like. He responds “I am in hell”. Moments like this could shock, but Eternal You lets the people who create these apps off the hook.

Despite interviewing the heads of companies like YOV or Project December, Riesewick and Block never interrogate them too deeply, hoping that these tech bros might let their egos trip them up. One founder reveals his wife made him choose between her or his company, but knowing what we know about the types of people who seem to lead these companies, the revelation that he’s now divorced isn’t surprising. Still, he hasn’t lost his swagger, and Eternal You never manages to pierce these guys’ bluster. 

There is a telling moment when one founder, Jason Rohrer of Project December, reveals that he has no belief in any concept of an afterlife. However, the ethical implications of this stance as it relates to his product are not questioned thereafter. Riesewick and Block find such revelations interesting on their own terms, but they steadfastly refuse to interrogate what drives these men to create these products. Footage of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testifying to the U.S. Congress underlines the potential harms of AI programs, but Eternal You is too polished  to draw out the dangerousness.

Even when it cites the creepier examples of this technology (A South Korean woman’s VR interactions with an avatar of her daughter were voyeuristically broadcast on TV), Eternal You still opts to find some optimism in these products, and to conclude on a tidy, balanced note. Tech bros are infiltrating governments and social movements for any number of reasons, and yet a simple documentary on just one technology can’t even muster a critical question. It has its moments, but Eternal You is nowhere near as vital or interrogative as it thinks. For a critical portrait of technology’s titans, rewatch The Social Network instead.

Eternal You will be released on Digital and VOD, and on streaming channel Film Movement Plus on January 24, 2025.

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