{"id":698487,"date":"2025-11-10T04:20:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T01:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/can-you-really-talk-to-the-dead-using-ai-we-tried-out-deathbots-so-you-dont-have-to\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T04:20:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T01:20:13","slug":"can-you-really-talk-to-the-dead-using-ai-we-tried-out-deathbots-so-you-dont-have-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/can-you-really-talk-to-the-dead-using-ai-we-tried-out-deathbots-so-you-dont-have-to\/","title":{"rendered":"Can you really talk to the dead using AI? We tried out &#8216;deathbots&#8217; so you don&#8217;t have to"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_84 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a2576d3e2de9\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a2576d3e2de9\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/can-you-really-talk-to-the-dead-using-ai-we-tried-out-deathbots-so-you-dont-have-to\/#Digital_resurrection\" >Digital resurrection?<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"article-gallery lightGallery\">\n<div data-thumb=\"https:\/\/scx1.b-cdn.net\/csz\/news\/tmb\/2022\/using-iphone.jpg\" data-src=\"https:\/\/scx2.b-cdn.net\/gfx\/news\/hires\/2022\/using-iphone.jpg\" data-sub-html=\"Credit: Unsplash\/CC0 Public Domain\">\n<figure class=\"article-img\">\n            <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/scx1.b-cdn.net\/csz\/news\/800a\/2022\/using-iphone.jpg\" alt=\"using iphone\" title=\"Credit: Unsplash\/CC0 Public Domain\" width=\"800\" height=\"530\"\/><figcaption class=\"text-darken text-low-up text-truncate-js text-truncate mt-3\">\n                Credit: Unsplash\/CC0 Public Domain<br \/>\n            <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being used to preserve the voices and stories of the dead. From text-based chatbots that mimic loved ones to voice avatars that let you &#8220;speak&#8221; with the deceased, a growing digital afterlife industry promises to make memory interactive, and, in some cases, eternal.<\/p>\n<p>In our research, <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/journals\/memory-mind-and-media\/article\/synthetic-afterlives-deathbots-as-affective-infrastructures-of-memory\/1D3C7E664D715A471B7BAE8AE79CC2CF\" target=\"_blank\">recently published<\/a> in <i>Memory, Mind &amp; <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/social-mediaa\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Social Media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Media<\/a><\/i>, we explored what h<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>ens when remembering the dead is left to an algorithm. We even tried talking to digital versions of ourselves to find out.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Deathbots&#8221; are AI systems designed to simulate the voices, speech patterns and personalities of the deceased. They draw on a person&#8217;s digital traces\u2014voice recordings, text messages, emails and social media posts\u2014to create interactive avatars that appear to &#8220;speak&#8221; from beyond the grave.<\/p>\n<p>As the media theorist Simone Natale has said, these &#8220;technologies of illusion&#8221; have deep roots in spiritualist traditions. But AI makes them far more convincing, and commercially viable.<\/p>\n<p>Our work is part of a project called <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.syntheticpasts.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Synthetic Pasts<\/a>, which explores the impact <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/technology\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"4\" title=\"Technology\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">technology<\/a> has on the preservation of personal and collective memory. For our study, we looked at services that claim to preserve or recreate a person&#8217;s voice, memories or digital presence using AI. To understand how they work, we became our own test subjects. We uploaded our own videos, messages and voice notes, creating &#8220;digital doubles&#8221; of ourselves.<\/p>\n<p>                                                                                                        <!-- TechX - News - In-article --><\/p>\n<p>In some cases, we played the role of users preparing our own synthetic afterlives. In others, we acted as the bereaved trying to talk to a digital version of someone who has passed away.<\/p>\n<p>What we found was both fascinating and unsettling. Some systems focus on preserving memory. They help users record and store personal stories, organized by theme, such as childhood, family or advice for loved ones. AI then indexes the content and guides people through it, like a searchable archive.<\/p>\n<p>Others use generative AI to create ongoing conversations. You upload data about a deceased person\u2014messages, posts, even voice samples\u2014and the system builds a chatbot that can respond in their tone and style. It uses a subset of AI called machine learning (which improves through practice) to make its avatars evolve over time.<\/p>\n<p>Some present themselves as playful (&#8220;host a s\u00e9ance with AI&#8221;), but the experience can feel eerily intimate. All the platforms claim to offer an &#8220;authentic&#8221; emotional connection. Yet the more personalization we attempted, the more artificial it felt.<\/p>\n<p>When prompted by these systems we provided more information about ourselves, only to have the bot repeat the exact phrasing we had used in stiff, scripted replies. At times, the tone was incongruous, such as when cheerful emojis or upbeat phrasing appeared even when discussing death\u2014a clear reminder that algorithms are poor at handling the emotional weight of loss:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Oh hun\u2026 \ud83d\ude14 it (the death) is not something I&#8217;d wish for anyone to dwell on. It&#8217;s all a bit foggy now, to be honest. \ud83c\udf2b\ufe0f Let&#8217;s chat about something a bit cheerier, yeah?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The more archival-based tools we tested offered a calmer experience but also imposed rigid categories and limited nuance. As digital media scholar <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?sa=D&amp;q=https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1017\/mem.2024.16&amp;ust=1762258440000000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3wwloInkgEBrFH4821fIhl&amp;hl=en&amp;source=gmail\" target=\"_blank\">Andrew Hoskins<\/a> has observed, memory in the age of AI becomes &#8220;conversational&#8221;\u2014shaped by interactions between human and machine. But in our experiments, those conversations often felt flat, exposing the limits of synthetic intimacy:<\/p>\n<p>Human: You were always so encouraging and supportive. I miss you.<\/p>\n<p>Deathbot: I&#8217;m right here for you, always ready to offer encouragement and support whenever you need it. And I miss you too\u2026 Let&#8217;s take on today together, with positivity and strength.<\/p>\n<p>Behind these experiences lies a business model. These are not memorial charities, they are tech start-ups. Subscription fees, &#8220;freemium&#8221; tiers and partnerships with insurers or care providers reveal how remembrance is being turned into a product.<\/p>\n<p>As the philosophers Carl \u00d6hman and Luciano Floridi <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s11023-017-9445-2\" target=\"_blank\">have argued<\/a>, the digital afterlife industry operates within a &#8220;political economy of death,&#8221; where data continues to generate value long after a person&#8217;s life ends.<\/p>\n<p>Platforms encourage users to &#8220;capture their story forever,&#8221; but they also harvest emotional and biometric data to keep engagement high. Memory becomes a service\u2014an interaction to be designed, measured and monetized. This, as the professor of technology and society Andrew McStay <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s43681-022-00252-7\" target=\"_blank\">has shown<\/a>, is part of a wider &#8220;emotional AI&#8221; economy.<\/p>\n<p>                                                                                                        <!-- TechX - News - In-article --><\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Digital_resurrection\"><\/span>Digital resurrection?<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>The promise of these systems is a kind of resurrection\u2014the reanimation of the dead through data. They offer to return voices, gestures and personalities, not as memories recalled but as presences simulated in real time. This kind of &#8220;algorithmic empathy&#8221; can be persuasive, even moving, yet it exists within the limits of code, and quietly alters the experience of remembering, smoothing away the ambiguity and contradiction.<\/p>\n<p>These platforms demonstrate a tension between archival and generative forms of memory. All platforms, though, normalize certain ways of remembering, placing privilege on continuity, coherence and emotional responsiveness, while also producing new, data-driven forms of personhood.<\/p>\n<p>As the media theorist Wendy Chun <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.journals.uchicago.edu\/doi\/abs\/10.1086\/595632?casa_token=58lXJjzfTWAAAAAA:4d9ZT0v9BQDSPNxEOUZL0bimD0JnJ1W-jIugcxWqYxR1GeS6W5TEJUvUjQQGYzmWTQ4Xl-qUVLwK&amp;casa_token=chx83USlboAAAAAA:F769X-O3fg790fd2ZILxe3uZW-gzhX4OFsNVdSg8U88MfAQGevMGpJIjrd2TC7UKEuhOQ9q7fNnI\" target=\"_blank\">has observed<\/a>, digital technologies often conflate &#8220;storage&#8221; with &#8220;memory,&#8221; promising perfect recall while erasing the role of forgetting\u2014the absence that makes both mourning and remembering possible.<\/p>\n<p>In this sense, digital resurrection risks misunderstanding death itself: replacing the finality of loss with the endless availability of simulation, where the dead are always present, interactive and updated.<\/p>\n<p>AI can help preserve stories and voices, but it cannot replicate the living complexity of a person or a relationship. The &#8220;synthetic afterlives&#8221; we encountered are compelling precisely because they fail. They remind us that memory is relational, contextual and not programmable.<\/p>\n<p>Our study suggests that while you can talk to the dead with AI, what you hear back reveals more about the technologies and platforms that profit from memory\u2014and about ourselves\u2014than about the ghosts they claim we can talk to.<\/p>\n<div class=\"d-inline-block text-medium my-4\">\n                                                Provided by<br \/>\n                                                                                                    The Conversation<br \/>\n                                                    \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"icon_open\" href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<svg>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<use href=\"https:\/\/techx.b-cdn.net\/tmpl\/v2\/img\/svg\/sprite.svg#icon_open\" x=\"0\" y=\"0\"\/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/svg><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p class=\"article-main__note mt-4\">\n                                                This article is republished from <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\" target=\"_blank\">The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/can-you-really-talk-to-the-dead-using-ai-we-tried-out-deathbots-so-you-dont-have-to-268902\" target=\"_blank\">original article<\/a>.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/counter.theconversation.com\/content\/268902\/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced\" alt=\"The Conversation\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"\/>\n                                            <\/p>\n<p>                                        <!-- print only --><\/p>\n<div class=\"d-none d-print-block\">\n<p>\n                                                <strong>Citation<\/strong>:<br \/>\n                                                Can you really talk to the dead using AI? We tried out &#8216;deathbots&#8217; so you don&#8217;t have to (2025, November 9)<br \/>\n                                                retrieved 9 November 2025<br \/>\n                                                from https:\/\/techxplore.com\/<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">news<\/a>\/2025-11-dead-ai-deathbots-dont.html\n                                            <\/p>\n<p>\n                                            This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no<br \/>\n                                            part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.\n                                            <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script id=\"facebook-jssdk\" async=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMN63nwsw68G3Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more Like this articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/sciencee\/\" target=\"_blank\" >Science category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/news\/2025-11-dead-ai-deathbots-dont.html\" target=\"_blank\" >Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Credit: Unsplash\/CC0 Public Domain Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being used to preserve the voices and stories of the dead. From text-based chatbots that mimic loved ones to voice avatars that let you &#8220;speak&#8221; with the deceased, a growing digital afterlife industry promises to make memory interactive, and, in some cases, eternal. In our research,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":698488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/scx2.b-cdn.net\/gfx\/news\/hires\/2022\/using-iphone.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-698487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sciencee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}