Are chatbots of the dead a brilliant idea or a terrible one? | Aeon Essays

The assumption that a chatbot delivers – or seeks to deliver – an authoritative replication of a deceased person makes as much sense as the assumption that an actor’s portrayal of a historical figure in a drama represents the sole faithful depiction of that figure.

Any griever, or any student of history, knows that relationships don’t end neatly with death; memories, imaginings, questions and answers continue to churn in the minds of the living, aided by artefacts and shared community. The secular space where we allow this reality to flourish is the arts.

It is also why we should be suspicious of technology companies that offer us easy, prefabricated, supposedly complete chatbots. We should instead seek technology that enables us to create and fine-tune our own chatbots – without requiring extensive technical expertise. There are no shortcuts to thoughtful representations.

To some, these technologies are nothing more than embalming tools, made to mask the inevitable pain of profound loss. And among these many tools, what could be more pernicious than a chatbot that speaks in the voice of those who are, in reality, gone forever?

Like human mediums and Ouija boards, these bots appear to meet one of our deepest desires: to speak with the dead once again.

The more detailed, specific and multi-modal our prompts and props, the closer the imagined representation of a past person may be to the once-living person.

But a representation will always remain a representation – regardless of its accuracy.

And so, the builder of this chatbot is forced to ask difficult questions about the deceased that call for care and attention: how do I want to remember them? How should a person be remembered? The deliberative effort that goes into building a chatbot highlights that the end product is a representation, inflected with the creator’s choices and persp... See more

Many critics view this technological endeavour as an especially abject form of death denial. A common objection to these bots is that emotionally vulnerable users may become so invested in their interactions that they will conflate their chatbot with the deceased person, or lose sight of the fact that the person is gone. As the philosopher Patrick ... See more

In Book 11 of Homer’s Odyssey, also known as the Nekyia (or Book of the Dead ), Odysseus journeys to the underworld and finds his dead mother, Anticlea, who has become a shade – a spirit he cannot embrace.