AI-Generated Scam Obituaries Take Over Google

Scam obituaries may target people who are still alive or those who recently died, leaving loved ones outraged.

In January, Deborah Vankin was very much alive when her father reached out, concerned that news was being spread that she had died. The culprit? Fake AI-generated scam obituaries. The L.A.-based journalist Vankin hesitatingly started to read some of the obituaries that had been posted. Vankin described her whirlwind of emotions to CNN, sharing, “I oddly didn’t panic. I was mostly confused at first, then outraged. …. I was sad – reading your own obituary is a surreal experience. After speaking with experts, I was scared – for myself, for all journalists, and for our society.”

Vankin was the victim of a growing industry of scams that involve creating fake obituaries in order to get clicks and generate revenue from ads on fraudulent websites. The more times the content gets shared and more people react in shock or sadness, or even just try to discover the truth, the more money the scammers make. Chris Pierson, CEO of cybersecurity firm BlackCloak, told USA Today that so much personal information is readily available online, anyone could be targeted. He suspects, however, that scammers will start to target celebrities or other well known individuals, because of the extreme interest the public would have in their deaths. Even if the clickbait obituary was debunked and removed within a few hours, it could rack up millions of views, which could translate to big bucks.

Joshua Klopfenstein, co-founder of Lindenwood Marketing, which offers digital services to funeral homes, told CNN that these fake obituaries are AI generated and are deliberately created with search words to capitalize on what people might be searching for in Google. The Verge identified one such website based out of Thailand, that posts over 20 obituaries a day of random people, and noted that the obituaries were robotic, vague, and followed the same format over and over again. Phrases like “untimely demise” and the “indelible mark” left by the person proliferated without giving any actual information about the person, and the posts were often tagged as trending.

This scam has also expanded into quickly generating AI obituaries for people who have actually died, faster than families of the deceased can craft what they want to say. These AI-generated obituaries similarly lack depth about who the person actually was, but instead rely on search engine optimization phrases that will draw Google searches their way. Tech industry vet Chris Silver Smith posted his story on Twitter about how his brother-in-law had died late one night on a Friday in a car crash. Throughout the weekend, multiple spam obituaries had popped up before the family had even identified the body or had a chance to write their own more thoughtful obituary. Sam Kochevar also shared how scam obituaries were generated when his brother Joshua died, some with wrong dates or information, or vague phrases like, “In times of challenge, he stood as a beacon of light.” Kochevar reflected how people were profiting off his family’s loss, and marred what should have been a cathartic process of remembering his brother and articulating what he meant to them.

AI-generated content like obituaries, whether for the still-living or the deceased, can be churned out at an alarming rate. Google has said that they are changing policies on what websites and news they promote in an effort to limit what they describe as obituary spam, but it remains to be seen how much will change. In the meantime, victims of scam obituaries and their family and friends continue to express outrage.