This AI Can Estimate How Long You’ve Been Dead. How It Works Is the Weird Part
Artificial intelligence can solve theoretical math problems, identify a mysterious enzyme system in viruses, potentially render humans extinct by the end of the decade, and, according to new research, estimate the length of time you’ve been dead. In a study published Monday in Nature Communications, researchers developed an AI system that uses microbes on cadavers to estimate their postmortem intervals (PMI), or time since death. The system, called mHolmes, was trained on public data from 34 human cadavers.
- ▪Artificial intelligence can solve theoretical math problems, identify a mysterious enzyme system in viruses, potentially render humans extinct by the end of the decade, and, according to new research, estimate the length of time you’ve been
- ▪In a study published Monday in Nature Communications, researchers developed an AI system that uses microbes on cadavers to estimate their postmortem intervals (PMI), or time since death.
- ▪The system, called mHolmes, was trained on public data from 34 human cadavers.
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| Original publisher | Gizmodo |
| Canonical URL | https://gizmodo.com/ai-can-now-estimate-how-long-youve-been-dead-how-it-works-is-the-weird-part-2000819759 |
| Publication time | Wed, 30 Sep 2026 20:45:02 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-30T20:47:01.893Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-30T20:47:01.893Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
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| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | v-MNsavBL36s · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
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| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Artificial intelligence can solve theoretical math problems, identify a mysterious enzyme system in viruses, potentially render humans extinct by the end of the decade, and, according to new research, estimate the length of time you’ve been dead. In a study published Monday in Nature Communications, researchers developed an AI system that uses microbes on cadavers to estimate their postmortem intervals (PMI), or time since death. The system, called mHolmes, was trained on public data from 34 human cadavers. While further work is needed, it could one day greatly improve forensic investigations. “Estimating time since death is very difficult in forensic science,” Kang Ning, co-author of the study and a bioinformatics expert at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, told Gizmodo.
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