AI allows us to chat with a deceased loved one: can it help in the grieving process or is it a commercial scam?

Being able to speak to a beloved deceased person may be the silent wish of many. In the past, solace was sought from a medium or in other paranormal activities, but nowadays you can also turn to ‘grief tech’ or ‘grief technology’.

This kind of technology, like Seance AI or Project December, aims to simulate a deceased person. According to Nathalie Smuha, a researcher in Law, Ethics and AI at KU Leuven, there are different types of applications. "Most apps work on the basis of a ‘large language model’. This is a large model trained on enormous amounts of data and which can converse with us," she explains.

This large language model is then supplemented by chat conversations that someone had with the deceased person when they were still alive.  The goal is to mimic conversations with the deceased! "By plugging messages from a deceased person or a loved one into that model, that model can be further fine-tuned and more specifically trained. Based on this information, a chatbot will then try to interact with you in the same way as the deceased."

There are also apps that go beyond ‘regular’ chat applications. Here, even audio and video play a role. These systems need to be fed with images or audio clips of the deceased to create a simulation of the deceased person!

How successful are such efforts? "It's obviously not the same as speaking to the deceased person. The chatbot is also trained on a lot of other data, not just the data you put in," Ms Smuha stresses. And effectiveness is only one element. Like other AI applications, grief technology too raises a lot of concerns and issues.

It's business

"First and foremost, it’s a commercial initiative," Smuha says. "There's a business model underpinning the companies that offer such services. Either you pay a subscription on a monthly or weekly basis, or it's free, but then they show ads." Either way, the company makes a profit from your use of the application.

Ms Smuha says this commercial aspect is one of the biggest question marks surrounding this technology. "A person who wants to stay in touch with a deceased person is especially vulnerable. The app developer can exploit this vulnerability by charging more money, showing more ads or taking more data."

Emotional connection

"Many of us are not used to interacting with such chatbots. The technology may seem life-like, but AI and chatbots are new to many of us. As yet we possess no real resilience against the emotional attachment we risk creating with this technology. It makes us particularly vulnerable."

An emotional relationship with technology may seem like a romantic idea just like in Hollywood movies. In one famous example, the movie "Her," the protagonist falls madly in love with his AI assistant. It’s fiction, but according to Ms Smuha, it could soon be closer to reality than most of us think!

"There are definitely already a lot of cases of people becoming emotionally dependent on technology like this. It is designed by developers to build an emotional connection with you, whether that chatbot mimics a deceased person, or has friendly or romantic intentions."

The fact that developers hold the (commercial) reins of this emotional connection can be dangerous.

Is it a Band-aid on a wound?

But couldn't chatbots like these also help many people and ease the grieving process? There is no clear answer to that as yet, Ms Smuha says. "At the moment, there has not been enough research on both the short-term and long-term effects of this kind of technology. There’s no evidence that a good alternative to human support exists, especially in times of grief."

"It may have a positive effect on the coping process," Ms Smuha notes. She isn’t necessarily ruling it out just like that, but more research and an awareness-raising process is crucial before technology like this can be fully embraced, she adds.

Until then, caution is advised. "It is one thing to use an app in consultation with a therapist, but it is something quite different to use it on your own. You are at your most vulnerable at times of grief and not always fully aware that this is just a simulation and that the aim is to improve the coping process, not to cling to the simulation."

Privacy after death

Ms Smuha also points to legal issues. "European privacy laws only apply to the living," she says. So, after you die, you are no longer protected. "But just because you can legally do something with your deceased grandmother's data, does not mean it is also ethically or morally permissible."

"I think, as a society, we need to think about that kind of thing. Are there rules we want to adopt to protect deceased people as well? We are leaving behind so much more digital data nowadays. What should happen to it? And who has the right to create a chatbot of you after your death and to allow others to speak with it?"

There’s plenty of food for thought before you start using such technology yourself!