Every day, an elderly woman in China’s Shandong province looks forward to a video call from her son. He asks about her health, tells her he has been busy with work, and promises he will come home once he has saved enough money. She tells him she misses him. He tells her to take care of herself.
Her son died in a car accident more than a year ago. The man on the other end of the call is not him. It is an artificial intelligence clone, built to look like him, sound like him and, according to the family who commissioned it, keep her alive.
The woman, who is in her eighties and suffers from heart disease, lost her only son in a road accident last year. Fearing the shock of his death would be too much for her fragile health, the family decided not to tell her the truth.
Instead, they turned to technology. Her grandson contacted Zhang Zewei, founder of Super Brain, a Nanjing-based AI start-up, and provided hundreds of photographs, video clips and audio recordings.
The team used the material to build a highly realistic virtual version of the man, replicating his appearance, his voice in his local dialect and even his habit of leaning forward slightly when he spoke.
The AI clone told the woman her son had moved away and was unable to visit in person.
“You should call me more often so that I know whether you are living well,” the unsuspecting mother told the AI. “I miss you so much. I feel so sorry that I cannot see you in person.”
“OK, Mum,” the AI replied. “But I am too busy. I cannot talk to you for a long time. Take care of yourself.”
The story came to light after Zhang spoke publicly about the project. A related hashtag on Chinese social media platform Weibo was viewed more than 90 million times. It has since sparked intense debate about what grief technology is actually doing to the people it claims to help.
AnewZ reached out to Super Brain for comment but received no response.
Zhang has previously described the arrangement as a “well-intentioned lie”, adding that Super Brain always obtains consent from family members of the deceased.
He has also said he screens clients carefully, declining to work with those he believes could be negatively affected by the service. For Zhang, the technology is simply a tool, and he argues that, like any tool, its value depends on how it is used.
Not everyone is so relaxed about it. AnewZ spoke with Dr Jiang, a Beijing-based AI ethics researcher, who said the case illustrates how quickly the technology has outpaced any ethical or regulatory framework designed to govern it.
Creating a convincing digital replica of a deceased person raises serious questions about consent, as the son never agreed to be recreated. It also raises questions about what obligations exist towards the person being deceived.
There is a meaningful difference, she said, between using AI to preserve memories of someone and using it to simulate their continued existence. One is a tribute. The other is an ongoing fiction with no clear end point.
China’s digital human industry was worth around 600 million U.S. dollars in 2024, having grown by 85 per cent in a single year. A handful of companies now offer services ranging from basic voice replicas to fully interactive avatars, and Super Brain is among the best known.
China’s internet regulator has proposed new rules that would require AI-generated content to be clearly labelled and would prohibit the creation of deepfake clones without the explicit consent of the individual being replicated. Fines for non-compliance would range from 10,000 to 200,000 yuan.
The regulations are still being finalised.
For now, the woman in Shandong continues waiting for her son to come home. As far as she knows, he is simply busy.
For the rest of the world, the story of what her family built to protect her may be one of the most quietly unsettling examples yet of what artificial intelligence has made possible.
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