Striking the right balance

In the last column we looked at the growing presence of artificial intelligence in the funeral profession: the tools, the opportunities, and the risks that come with them. It's impossible to overlook the ethical context. Were it possible, it would be inadvisable.

The funeral profession is built on empathy, understanding and trust, which raises the question: how do we deal with this technological shift when AI has the potential to erode people's confidence in, well, everything?

As society adopts the technology, the perception and understanding of what AI can do increases and with it, to an extent, grows distrust, cynicism and suspicion. How do you know when something is authentic – when it is written with genuine care and consideration? How does anyone? And how does that make you feel?

Let's face it, you don't even know if the words you're reading right now were crafted by a human or generated by AI. And if I told you ChatGPT wrote it, how would it change your response or your perception of me or the magazine? I promise you a human wrote all of this, but AI has the potential to generate text that you can't distinguish from handmade.

The truth is that the benefits of AI are hard to ignore. It speeds up paperwork that would otherwise drag on for hours, it helps get you started when you are lost for words, it makes short work of research and summarises meetings in a heartbeat.

Used well, AI gives time back to us. That time can then be spent listening to and comforting the families you look after. But used badly, it can cheapen that same experience in an instant.

People think of AI as the thing that gets us to a first draft – that quick email, meeting summary, or the beginning of a policy document. It's a welcome shortcut. But helpful as that first draft can be, it's also creating a new problem: an abundance of lower-quality writing, unaffectionately referred to as AI slop.

Getting the most from AI means giving it the right, suitably detailed prompts, fact-checking its output closely and editing it carefully, not just accepting whatever it spits out. This applies even more so in the funeral sector. A generated obituary or condolence message might look polished at first glance, but unless someone with care and understanding takes time to refine it, it risks losing the warmth and humanity that makes it meaningful.

In an industry where authenticity is the currency, the human touch remains our most valuable asset.

And yet, to see AI only through the lens of text generation is to miss the sheer scale of what's happening. The AI universe, or perhaps the AI-verse, is vast. It extends far beyond the familiar tools we use every day like ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot. Behind the scenes, AI is quietly expanding into areas, such as online therapy, that will likely redefine what care itself looks like.

If such tools become commonplace through convenience, how will that affect the role of funeral professionals? AI can be extraordinary, but only when guided by people who know what extraordinary service really means.

In an industry where authenticity is the currency, the human touch remains our most valuable asset. And if AI can give us back the time and headspace to be more present with people, then perhaps that's the most practical, and positive, outcome of all.