Griefbots Offer AI Connections with Deceased Loved Ones

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 30 April 2025

⏱️ 16 minutes

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Summary

Griefbots, artificial intelligence chatbots that mimic deceased loved ones, are increasingly in popularity. Researcher Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basińska reflects on what death, grief and immortality look like in the digital age. She shares insights from a project that she is leading as a AI2050 Early Career Fellow: Imaginaries of Immortality in the Age of AI: An Intercultural Analysis. Plus, we discuss the ethical and privacy concerns surrounding how the data of the deceased are used and what consumers should be on the lookout for if they want to use griefbots. Recommended reading: You can read a recent paper on griefbots co-authored by Nowaczyk-Basińska: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13347-024-00744-w And you can keep up with her research: https://katarzynanowaczykbasinska.pl/en/dr-katarzyna-nowaczyk-basinska/ Read our coverage of the tricky ethical debates around AI: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-god-chatbots-changing-religious-inquiry/ E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Alex Sugiura with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Here's the truth about AI.
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0:27.8	slash UK slash AI for people. For Scientific American Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Fultman.
0:53.4	The idea of digital life after death is something science fiction has been exploring for ages.
0:59.3	Back in 2013, a chilling episode of the hit show Black Mirror called Be Right Back
1:04.2	followed a grieving woman who came to rely on an imperfect AI copy of her dead partner.
1:09.9	More recently, the idea of digital copies of the deceased
1:12.6	even made it into a comedy with Amazon Prime Show upload.
1:16.6	That shift from psychological horror to satire makes sense,
1:20.6	because in the decade or so between the premieres of those shows,
1:23.6	the idea of preserving our dead with digital tools
1:26.6	has become way less hypothetical.
1:29.6	There's now a growing industry of what some experts call grief bots, which offer AI-powered
1:35.0	mimics of users' departed loved ones. But these services come with a whole host of ethical concerns
1:40.9	for both the living and the deceased. My guest today is Katerjana Novitschik Baskinska.
1:47.1	She's a research fellow at the Leverholm Center for the Future of Intelligence at the University
	...

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