{{Short description|Avatar of a dead person created by AI}}
A '''deadbot''', '''deathbot''', or '''griefbot''' is a digital avatar, created with artificial intelligence, which resembles a person who is dead.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.npr.org/2025/08/26/nx-s1-5508355/ai-dead-people-chatbots-videos-parkland-court |title=AI 'deadbots' are persuasive — and researchers say they're primed for monetization |date=August 26, 2025 |publisher=NPR |author=Chloe Veltman}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Hollanek |first=Tomasz |last2=Nowaczyk-Basińska |first2=Katarzyna |date=2024-05-09 |title=Griefbots, Deadbots, Postmortem Avatars: on Responsible Applications of Generative AI in the Digital Afterlife Industry |url=https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-024-00744-w |journal=Philosophy & Technology |language=en |volume=37 |issue=2 |pages=63 |doi=10.1007/s13347-024-00744-w |issn=2210-5441|doi-access=free }}</ref> Griefbots employ natural language processing and machine-learning techniques to approximate the style and personality of a deceased person. They may appear as chatbots, voice assistants, or animated avatars, and are often trained on an individual's digital remains.
== History == Among the earliest researchers, Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad of the University of Washington, developed the Grandpa Bot project, a conversational simulation of his late father designed for his children to interact with.<ref>{{cite conference |last=Ahmad |first=M. A. |year=2016 |title=After Death: Big Data and the Promise of Resurrection by Proxy |conference=CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems |doi=10.1145/2851581.2892591}}</ref>
Other efforts include journalist James Vlahos's Dadbot, which evolved into the commercial platform HereAfter AI. Hossein Rahnama's Augmented Eternity research at MIT Media Lab and Toronto Metropolitan University, and game designer Jason Rohrer's "Project December", have enabled users to converse with language-model representations of loved ones. Early commercial projects such as Eternime, founded by Marius Ursache, also popularized the notion of interactive digital immortality.
== Cultural and societal impact == Scholars have proposed frameworks and critiques addressing the ethics of these technologies. Tomasz Hollanek and Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basińska developed a design-ethics taxonomy distinguishing the data donor, data recipient, and interactant. Edina Harbinja and Lilian Edwards formalized the concept of post-mortem privacy, and Carl J. Öhman at the Oxford Internet Institute studied the management of large-scale digital remains.
Cultural acceptance varies: while some view them as expressions of remembrance, others regard them as unsettling or ethically problematic. Concerns have been raised about deadbots' potential for creating psychological harm.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Hern |first=Alex |date=2024-05-09 |title=Digital recreations of dead people need urgent regulation, AI ethicists say |url=https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/may/09/digital-recreations-of-dead-people-need-urgent-regulation-ai-ethicists-say |access-date=2025-09-16 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}}</ref> Griefbots are considered part of the phenomenon of artificial intimacy.
== See also == * Online memorial * Simulacrum * Digital afterlife
==References== {{reflist}}
== External links == * [https://www.hereafter.ai HereAfter AI official website] * [https://humanities.org/spark/artificial-intelligence-death-grief/ Humanities Washington – When Your Grandpa Is a Bot]
Category:Artificial intelligence Category:Monuments and memorials Category:Simulation
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