"Her digital seance was not cathartic, nor did it give her any closure. After an emotional two hours of hearing her father's voice from the machine, which she dubbed Dadbot, she ended the conversation, never to interact with it again. "Saying goodbye to Dadbot was surprisingly hard," she says. "When I finished and turned it off, I spent the rest of the day feeling like I had done something wrong.""
"Interactive digital recreations of people who have died are known by various names: deathbots, thanabots, ghostbots and, perhaps most commonly, griefbots. Nolan created Dadbot by combining the chatbot ChatGPT with a voice-modelling program made by AI software firm ElevenLabs in New York City. But 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."
Rebecca Nolan built an AI recreation of her deceased father, combining ChatGPT with an ElevenLabs voice-modelling program, and named it Dadbot. The father, a physician, remained in denial about his death and passed away when Nolan was 14, creating unresolved conflict. A two-hour interaction with Dadbot produced anger rather than closure; ending the session left Nolan feeling guilty and unsettled. Such interactive digital recreations are called deathbots, thanabots, ghostbots, or griefbots. Multiple platforms now offer these services, and developers report millions of users. Some proponents claim comfort; critics warn of potential complications for the grieving process amid limited research.
Read at Nature
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