209. Deadbots and Griefbots: Inside the Business of Digital Immortality

<p>Welcome, Goddess, to the special Halloween month series of the Goddess of Technology podcast.</p><p>Imagine losing someone you love. You know that this person is gone. You attend the funeral. You understand what death means.</p><p>Then your phone lights up. Their name appears on your screen. And they type: ‘I missed you.’</p><p>This is no paranormal encounter. No ghost has entered your phone. What you are seeing could be a deadbot or griefbot: an artificial intelligence system designed to simulate a deceased person using pieces of the digital life that person leaves behind.</p><p>In this podcast episode, we’re exploring the rapidly developing world of deadbots, griefbots, postmortem avatars and the digital afterlife. </p><p>We’re examining what these technologies are, where they come from, why someone might find them comforting and why researchers are simultaneously asking difficult questions about grief, identity, consent, privacy and emotional dependency.</p><p>Because there is something extraordinarily human behind this technological development: the desire for one more conversation.</p><p>One more question. One more laugh. One more chance to say ‘I love you.’</p><p>Yet what happens when technology transforms that wish into a product?</p><p>When an algorithm produces sentences your loved one never actually said, whose words are you reading?</p><p>Could an artificial recreation support healthy remembrance, or could an endlessly available simulation interfere with the psychological process of acknowledging loss?</p><p>Who gives consent for someone to be digitally resurrected?</p><p>What happens to the photographs, voice recordings, private messages and memories used to create that artificial person?</p><p>And perhaps the creepiest question of all: if you eventually decide to turn the deadbot off, can losing the simulation begin to resemble losing the person for a second time?</p><p>Beautiful, this Halloween episode takes you into a world where death, memory and artificial intelligence increasingly occupy the same digital room.</p><p>You may enter thinking this is a story about technology.</p><p>You may leave wondering what it means to be remembered.</p><p>I would love to hear your perspective. Would you ever create or interact with a deadbot of someone you love? Would you want an artificial version of yourself to remain after your death? E-mail your opinion or personal experience to <a href="mailto:coucou.goddess@gmail.com"><u>coucou.goddess@gmail.com<