Can we talk to the dead people using AI? Findings are interesting and even more disturbing
New Delhi: The use of artificial intelligence to preserve the voices and stories of the deceased is growing rapidly. Some chatbots speak like loved ones, and some ‘voice’ avatars allow you to ‘talk’ to deceased people. Thus, a new industry is emerging in the digital world, promising to revive memories and, in some cases, preserve them forever.
In a recent study published in ‘Memory, Mind and Media,’ Dr. Eva Nieto McEvoy of King’s College London and Jenny Kidd of Cardiff University explored what happens when the task of remembering the dead is left to an algorithm. They even tried talking to their digital versions.
What are Deathbots?
“Deathbots” are designed for this purpose. “Deathbots” are AI systems designed to simulate the voice, speech patterns, and personality of a deceased person. They use voice recordings, text messages, emails, and social media posts to create interactive avatars that appear to be speaking to a person from beyond death.
As media theorist Simone Natale has noted, these “illusion technologies” have their roots in spiritualist traditions, but AI makes them much more credible and commercially viable.
Part of a project called Synthetic Pasts
This work is part of a project called “Synthetic Pasts,” which studies the impact of technology on the preservation of individual and collective memory. Their study focused on services that claim to preserve or recreate a person’s voice, memories, or digital presence using AI.
To understand how they work, they conducted their own experiments. They uploaded videos, messages, and voice notes, creating their own “digital counterparts.”
In some cases, they played the role of users creating their own artificial afterlife. In others, they played the role of a grieving person trying to speak to a digital version of a deceased person.
Disturbing findings emerged
What emerged was both interesting and disturbing. Some systems focus on preserving memory. They help users record and store personal stories, organized by topic, such as childhood, family, or advice for loved ones. Then, AI indexes the content and guides people to a searchable archive.
Other systems use generative AI to create ongoing dialogues. You upload data about a deceased person, messages, posts, even voice samples, and the system creates a chatbot that can respond in their tone and style. It utilises a subset of AI called machine learning to evolve its avatar over time, which improves through practice.
These systems provided more information about themselves when prompted, but the bot repeated the same phrases used in rigid, written responses. At times, the tone was inconsistent, as when discussing death, even when happy emojis or enthusiastic phrases appeared, serving as a stark reminder that algorithms are ill-equipped to handle the emotional weight of loss.
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