Grief and AI
by Keenya Mclean
As an unavoidable part of the human experience, grief is a natural response to loss and suffering. Whether it is the loss of a relative, pet, relationship, or a dream, every individual has a unique response to loss. Specifically, over the last five years, grief has been an undercurrent in society as a result of how the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns disrupted all aspects of life across the world. Coinciding with the sudden loss of life and social disruption has been an increased reliance on technology, including generative artificial intelligence (AI). While the development of AI technology has been beneficial in transferring information and improving individual tasks, the continued incorporation of the digital world into society has led to controversial developments such as the grief chatbot (griefbot). As a technological phenomenon, griefbots are digital entities that are being used to help people process loss through mimicking the deceased individuals’ likeness, speech, and behaviour. By using samples of the deceased person's data, including text, videos, emails and messages, along with large language models (LLMs), griefbots are able to generate first-person conversations that can reproduce personality and speech patterns.
Those in favour of griefbots believe that it represents another form of communication with the dead, similar to visiting a cemetery and speaking to a grave. The technology assists the mourning process by creating a private space for loved ones to experience closure while receiving a response. In doing so, the chatbot creates a continuing digital bond beyond death that transforms the grieving process through rejecting the idea of "letting go” and instead embracing the reconstruction of their relationship to the individual.
Conversely, critics highlight that involving AI in the mourning process can lead to moral and ethical concerns. Emotional dependence on the chatbot can hinder the process of moving forward in the real world, in addition to distorting memories of the deceased. Besides the emotional fallout, some chatbots can be regarded as commodifying grief and exploiting the vulnerability of grieving individuals.
Companies such as HereAfter AI, Storyfile, and Project December offer "digital resurrection” services through a paid subscription system in order to access their chatbots and AI clones. These companies optimize the interactions between the chatbot and the grieving individual to maintain their financial goals. Through these interactions, the content that is created compounds the users’ memories and grief, and can encourage an emotional addiction. The AI-enabled immortality of deceased individuals further impacts concerns over privacy in the digital world by allowing their likeness to be used without prior written agreement. Even in death, consent and the body remain an area that is exploited as these companies emphasize that the wishes of the living overshadow the wishes of the dead.
