Max Verstappen was Formula 1 champion last season as he broke the record for most race wins in a season previously held by Michael Schumacher. Schumacher has not been seen for more than a decade since suffering a snowboarding accident in 2013. Because he and Lewis Hamilton still hold the record for the most career F1 championship wins, Schumacher still has many fans.
Last year Die Aktuelle magazine published an allegedly exclusive interview with Michael Schumacher. However, Schumacher's family has filed a lawsuit against Die Aktuelle because it was a fake interview that was actually generated using artificial intelligence (AI).
A court in Munich last week fined Die Aktuelle 200,000 Euros for publishing the fake news. Meanwhile Die Aktuelle has fired editor-in-chief Anne Hoffman who was responsible for approving the publication of the interview and the magazine has apologized to the Schumacher family.
The issue of using AI is now increasingly discussed as more and more people are aware of moral issues and intellectual property being violated in order to train models. Actress Scarlett Johansson last week used a lawyer to force OpenAI to stop using the virtual assistant ChatGPT's voice that resembles her own.
At the same time several companies started offering AI models and avatars for deceased people. Before dying, the customer's memory, voice and face are immortalized and then realistic avatars become self-replacements. In Japan, for example, it is used by parents who have lost a child to cure longing for the deceased.