Dealing with the death of a loved one is always painful and complex. How far should one go to find closure? How should those helping family members grieve conduct themselves? And what about the digital assets of a family member who has passed away?
Adding to the complexity, tech companies have entered the business of helping people grieve. This new field, known as “grief tech,” involves artificial intelligence or AI businesses creating realistic-looking chatbots that mimic the recently deceased, even replicating their voices.
A case in point would be Christi Angel, a New Yorker who signed up for an AI chatbot that would speak to her by impersonating her deceased partner, Cameroun. “I knew it was an AI system, but once I started chatting, I felt like I was talking to Cameroun. That’s how real it felt to me,” she says.
However, things were disturbing when the chatbot, Cameroun, said he was “in hell.” As a practicing Christian, Angel was deeply upset about this and sought some clarity in a different, second conversation with the chatbot, which eventually reassured her by saying he was not in hell.
Angel is among a growing number of people turning to AI to cope with grief. Advances in generative AI—technology that creates realistic text, audio, or images from simple prompts—have made this possible.
Her story and others who have used technology to manage grief are featured in the documentary Eternal You, which premieres in the UK at the Sheffield Doc/Fest and will have a wider release on June 28.
German directors Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck express concerns about using AI in this manner. “These vulnerable people very shortly forget they are talking to a machine-learning system, and that’s a huge problem in regulating these systems,” says Block.
Jason Rohrer, a video game designer, created a platform called Project December that Angel used. Initially an art project to create chatbot personas, Project December now helps users recreate deceased loved ones. The site advertises this with the tagline “Simulate the dead.” Users input details about the deceased, such as nicknames, character traits, and cause of death, which are fed into an AI model.
Rohrer charges $10 per user to cover operating costs, and he claims many have found it comfortable. Several people have said it is helpful for them and have thanked him for making it, he says. He does acknowledge that some users have been dissatisfied with the chatbots’ errors or out-of-character responses.
Another example of grief technology in the documentary is YOV, or “You, Only Virtual,” which allows people to create “personas,” or virtual personas, of themselves or deceased loved ones.
Justin Harrison, YOV’s founder, created a version of his mother, Melodi, with her cooperation before she died in 2022. Harrison, 41, continues to converse with Melodi’s persona, finding comfort in its evolving nature.
“Humans have been notoriously consistent and universal in their desire to stay connected to lost loved ones. We are just doing that with the tools that 2024 allows us to do it with,” he says.
However, Sherry Turkle, a professor at MIT specializing in human interaction with technology, warns that these AI applications might hinder the grieving process. She calls this the unwillingness to mourn and the never-ending seance.
The documentary also highlights the positive use of AI.
Jang Ji-sung, from South Korea, lost her seven-year-old daughter Nayeon to a rare illness in 2016. In 2020, she participated in a TV show that created a virtual-reality version of Nayeon. The footage shows Jang emotionally interacting with her virtual child.
Jang found the experience rather beneficial, but only for a one-time event. The experience offered a form of closure after her sudden loss. “If in any way it alleviates a little bit of the guilt and the pain, and you’re feeling pretty desperate, then I would recommend it,” she says.
However, Jang has no interest in repeating the experience with newer AI technology. He would prefer to write her a handwritten letter, leave it where her remains are, and visit her grave.
Both Angel and Jang reference an episode of the 2013 TV series Black Mirror in which a woman resurrects her dead lover using his online communications. Now that technology has caught up with such fictional portrayals, researchers call for the regulation of grief technology.
Legal questions also arise concerning using data to create these digital likenesses. Andrew Wilson-Bushell, a lawyer at the UK firm Simkins, notes the complexity and variability of laws across different countries. “As with all things AI-related, the law is untested, very complex, and varies from country to country. Users and platforms should be thinking about rights in the training data as well as the output and the various sources of regulation in the UK,” he explains.
Ultimately, he believes the acceptance and use of AI for simulating deceased loved ones will face significant public scrutiny. “I expect that the use of AI ghosts will be tested in the court of public opinion long before a legal challenge is able to take place.”
