AI apps offer the illusion of talking to the dead

When a new technology appears, there “is always this urge to use it to contact the dead,” says Mark Sample, a professor of digital studies. Thomas Edison tried to invent a “spirit phone”, he reminds the NYT. And so with artificial intelligence, which people are using to create chatbots of deceased relatives. Stephenie Lucas Oney uses HereAfter AI to ask her father questions about his life as a Black police officer and judge from Harlem; his voice and answers are generated based on interviews conducted before his death. Some are enthralled, others find it creepy. Ethically, the key is that people consent to be converted into a chatbot after death – and that those grieving keep a “realistic perspective” of what they are seeing, say psychiatrists.