AI griefbots create a computerized afterlife

Some people who have lost loved ones are turning to a new industry to communicate with their dearly departed: using artificial intelligence “griefbots” that mimic a deceased relative. Many say these chatbots can be a helpful part of the healing process, but some tech experts are wary.

How do these chatbots work?

These artificially intelligent chatbots are designed to mimic dead individuals. While this AI niche started small, there are “now more than half a dozen platforms that offer this service straight out of the box, and developers say that millions of people are using them to text, call or otherwise interact with recreations of the deceased,” said Nature. The large language models (LLMs) that these griefbots train from often use “data such as a person’s text messages and voice recordings to learn language patterns and context specific to that person.”

This is the “same foundation that powers ChatGPT and all other large language models,” said Scientific American, but catered to a specific person’s characteristics. These griefbots have helped people process the emotional distress of losing a loved one. “After getting over the initial shock of hearing the incredibly accurate representation of his voice, I definitely cried,” Andy O’Donnell, who used a griefbot to speak with his deceased father, said to The New York Times. “But it was more of a cry of relief to be able to hear his voice again because he had such a comforting voice.”

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Why are they controversial?

While some have lauded the creation of these griefbots, “questions about exploitation, privacy and their impact on the grieving process are multiplying,” said The Guardian. People working through their grief may “maintain a sense of connection and closeness” by talking to their departed loved one, and “deathbots can serve the same purpose,” Louise Richardson, a member of the philosophy department at the U.K.’s University of York, said to The Guardian.

Griefbots can also be detrimental to healing, however, as they “can get in the way of recognizing and accommodating what has been lost, because you can interact with a deathbot in an ongoing way,” Richardson told The Guardian. People may have lingering questions or concerns they wish to ask a dead loved one, and now it “feels like you are able to ask them.”

Proponents of griefbots say they are not meant to replace a deceased person but are “marketed as tools to comfort the grieving,” said Natasha Fernandez at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Institute for Human Rights. While the “intentions behind griefbots might seem compassionate, their broader implications require careful consideration.” Possible exploitation of grieving people is one of the biggest concerns, as “grieving individuals in their emotional vulnerability may be susceptible to expensive services marketed as tools for solace.”

Providing these people with a paid chatbot “could be seen as taking advantage of grief for profit,” said UAB’s Fernandez. And if these griefbots are deemed to be “exploitative, it prompts us to reconsider the ethicality of other death-related industries” that are also driven by profit, such as funeral homes. Unlike funeral homes, though, most tech companies that build griefbots “charge for their services through subscriptions or minute-by-minute payments, distinguishing them from other death-related industries.”