“Griefbots” reflecting and changing American rituals of mourning
“Griefbots” and other AI technologies are changing the rituals and spirituality surrounding mourning as they revive the role of mediums and psychics for people who have lost touch with traditional ways of mourning the dead, writes Joseph Davis in the journal Social Research (Fall). In an issue devoted to death, AI and new communication technologies, Davis and other contributors note that the adoption of such technologies in connection with death has extended beyond transhumanist mind uploading and cryopreservation to the wider world of those seeking a digital afterlife through commemoration on social media or as an interactive AI simulation. Davis focuses on how an increasing number of people are trying to sustain a digital legacy, memorializing and even communicating with the dead through these technologies’ promise of maintaining continuing bonds and an enduring connection. The griefbots, or “deathbots” are trained on a descendent’s “digital remains” (such as texts, online profiles, and recorded audio) whereby users can build an interactive application that emulates the conversational style, speech patterns, and knowledge of the deceased. Living persons can also create bots of themselves for life extension and leaving a legacy, which provides loved ones with a way to interact with them after their deaths.
Davis writes that these bots are appearing at a time when there has been a sea change in psychological understandings of mourning. Instead of treating mourning as a process where the bereaved let go of the departed to rejoin the living, bereaved people are now encouraged by therapists and death counselors to “stay connected” with the deceased and told that mourning is a lifelong process that is experienced differently by each individual. The older forms of mourning characterized by shared religious rituals and obligations to the dead and by communal support have also faded away in many funeral services. The new “grieftech” is filling these gaps for people left vulnerable by the lack of clear directives and guidance in the mourning process.
Along with the way that mourning can be assisted by the online practice of memorializing the dead, especially when friends and family are geographically dispersed, Davis writes that people are using griefbots to experience “paranormal co-presence,” where the dead are talked to and experienced to be present to the bereaved. In such cases, Facebook and other social media take on the character of a spiritualist medium facilitating communication between the deceased and friends of the dead, “no crystal balls or seances required,” as one psychologist observed. Since griefbots draw on data collected from the deceased, they increasingly simulate features of the dead, playing another role of the medium. While some argue that the bereaved using these bots are under no illusion that they are actually communicating with the deceased, Davis argues that the reality is more complicated, as the “very point of chatbots is to create ‘believable agents.’” He adds that press reports and the few existing user studies “clearly indicate that griefbots can induce such semi-beliefs. More strongly than the one-way communication of social media, the talking-back capacity of griefbots adds a material dimension that is particularly bewitching.”