🧠 Should we let AI revive the dead?

Subscribe | AI Toolkit | Meet The Team

Welcome back AI prodigies!

In today’s Sunday Special:

• 📜The Prelude

• 🪦How People Remember the Dead

• 🤖Why AI Changes Mourning

• 👥The Sociocultural Implications

• 🔑Key Takeaway

Read Time: 7 minutes

🎓Key Terms

• “Griefbots”: AI-based chatbots designed to simulate conversations with the deceased.

• Virtual Reality (VR): A simulated, interactive digital environment experienced through a headset that looks and sounds like reality.

🩺 PULSE CHECK

📜THE PRELUDE

AI continues to transform every facet of our lives, including how we process death, experience grief, and preserve memory.

Traditionally, processing the death of a loved one has been guided by ritual. In Japan, many families maintain Butsudan: a household altar where they offer flowers, candles, and incense to their ancestors.

In Ghana, it’s common to hold Ayie: a multi-day ceremony with dancing, drumming, and feasting to honor the deceased, affirm their legacy, and unite the living.

Every country has unique perspectives on death and the afterlife. Nearly all societies commemorate the dead, and in the process, bind communities together and carry the memories of the deceased forward.

AI stands ready to reinvent the grieving process. For example, a mother used Virtual Reality (VR) to “reunite” with her deceased daughter. These technological advancements compel us to confront a difficult question: What do we truly seek from mourning, and how might AI reshape those needs?

🪦HOW PEOPLE REMEMBER THE DEAD

⦿ 1️⃣ The Mourning Process.

Mourning is more than just sadness. It’s a visceral feeling that overcomes us. Oftentimes, it comes in waves beyond our control. In 1969, Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross wrote in her book “On Death and Dying” that grief could be divided into five stages. Her observations came from several years of working with terminally ill patients.

Here’s each step of her famous framework:

1. Denial: Death is shocking to the soul. To absorb reality more slowly, we instinctively use defense mechanisms to convince ourselves that loved ones are still with us. For example, continuing to talk about them in the present tense: “John loves when we play this song!”

2. Anger: Despair can spark intense rage. We may feel powerless or unfairly targeted by fate, lashing out at ourselves or others. For instance, blaming yourself for what happened.

3. Bargaining: Pain drives us to regain control by proposing deals with fate in exchange for relief from suffering. For example, promising to live a better life if only the loss could be undone: “I’ll quit smoking if you just bring them back!”

4. Depression: The weight of loss brings deep sadness. We may withdraw from life, feeling overwhelmed with emptiness. For example, avoiding social events because they feel meaningless, with shallow laughter and superficial conversations.

5. Acceptance: We acknowledge the reality of loss, allowing us to find ways to move forward. For example, remembering loved ones with a sense of peace and integrating their memory into the fabric of our everyday lives.

⦿ 2️⃣ The Griefing Process.

To manage grief, we participate in mourning, which typically falls into four categories:

1. Anchors of Identity: Letters, portraits, heirlooms, and gravestones represent who the deceased were and why they mattered.

2. Rituals of Farewell: Wakes, funerals, and memorials mark the transition from life to death.

3. Social Connection: Mourning is often a collective experience, where relatives from across the country come together to ease the pain and share memories.

4. Cultural Continuity: Stories are retold until they become family lore: “She was fearless!” or “He always kept his word.”

🤖WHY AI CHANGES MOURNING

⦿ 3️⃣ Bringing the Departed to Life?

Imagine attending a funeral where the departed speaks directly to you, sharing their favorite memories and answering your most pressing questions. This extraordinary moment took place at 87-year-old Holocaust educator Marina Smith’s funeral.

So, how was this possible?! Her family used StoryFile, an AI-powered platform that creates conversational videos, giving the illusion of a live conversation with Mrs. Smith even after her passing. The effect is uncanny: it’s as if you’re on FaceTime with your grandparent, but every answer is prerecorded.

StoryFile isn’t the only one pioneering the digital afterlife. Project December uses the digital footprints left behind by the deceased, including texts, emails, and social media posts, to create a conversational chatbot that captures their personality.

⦿ 4️⃣ Is This a Good Thing?

The concept of digital resurrections through conversational videos and conversational chatbots has raised concerns about how these technological advancements affect the grieving process.

These AI-powered platforms have the potential to offer comfort by preserving a loved one’s personality through an interactive digital memory that can be revisited at any time. For many, this means more than just recalling the past; it’s an opportunity to have meaningful “conversations” that provide comfort and closure.

In the short term, it might help grievers cope. But ultimately, it traps them in a loop of denial. According to K Sri Takshara, a research scholar at Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), technology-mediated grief tools, such as “griefbots,” help in coping with loss but also pose the risk of emotional dependency, making it harder to accept the reality of death and move on. In other words, traditional mourning has a sequence: death, funeral, commemoration, and closure. AI interrupts this established process.

👥THE SOCIOCULTURAL IMPLICATIONS

⦿ 5️⃣ The Collapse of Death.

The rise of AI-powered platforms designed to resurrect the dead alters how we perceive, characterize, and respond to death. So, how exactly do these changes materialize?

The first shift is in the social fabric of memory. For most of human history, grief has been a collective experience. For instance, funerals bring people together into a shared space to retell stories, recall memories, and reaffirm bonds. This collective scaffolding is weakening. Americans spent 30% less time socializing face-to-face in 2024 than they did in 2003. In other words, they spend 240 fewer hours connecting in person annually, which averages out to 20 fewer hours per month. As we gather less often, mourning has become an increasingly solitary act, where many are starting to grieve in isolation through AI-powered platforms.

The second shift is that death means presence, not forever absence. Traditional mourning transforms a living person into a venerated ancestor: a spirit remembered but no longer part of daily life. AI redefines what it means to remain present beyond mortality. It blurs the boundary between remembrance and presence. For example, a “griefbot” is built on static datasets, unable to change, forgive, adapt, or evolve. Yet it may still speak with authority, potentially influencing major life decisions, such as whether to forgive a sibling or accept that new job offer.

⦿ 6️⃣ The Digital Dead > The Living?

Since 2007, Facebook has allowed profiles of the deceased to be converted into memorial pages. Friends, family, and colleagues can post tributes, mark anniversaries, and maintain a collective archive of photos.

The Oxford Internet Institute (OII) estimates that the dead may outnumber the living on Facebook by 2070. If even a fraction of these Facebook profiles become interactive through AI-powered platforms, we’ll live in a world in which the dead shape the living at a scale never seen before.

In a time of rising isolation, the temptation to keep deceased loved ones close will be powerful. These “griefbots” can feel compassionate, even healing. But they also risk shifting mourning from a finite process to an infinite loop.

🔑KEY TAKEAWAY

AI redefines how we mourn by creating two-way conversations with the deceased. While this may offer comfort, it also blurs the boundary between memory and presence. The challenge lies in balancing the healing potential of “griefbots” with our innate need for closure.

📒FINAL NOTE

FEEDBACK

❤️TAIP Review of The Week

REFER & EARN

🎉Your Friends Learn, You Earn!

You currently have 0 referrals, only 1 away from receiving 🎓3 Simple Steps to Turn ChatGPT Into an Instant Expert.

Share your unique referral link: https://theaipulse.beehiiv.com/subscribe?ref=PLACEHOLDER