{"id":93717,"date":"2026-02-10T18:42:20","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T18:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/uncategorized\/i-turned-myself-into-an-ai-generated-deathbot"},"modified":"2026-02-10T19:52:33","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T19:52:33","slug":"i-turned-myself-into-an-ai-generated-deathbot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/gambia\/all-news\/i-turned-myself-into-an-ai-generated-deathbot","title":{"rendered":"I Turned myself into an Ai-Generated Deathbot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Gambia. <\/strong> <\/span>If a loved-one died tomorrow, would you want to keep talking to them?<\/p>\n

Not through memories or saved messages, but through artificial intelligence – a chatbot that uses their texts, emails and voice notes, to reply in their tone and style.<\/p>\n

A growing number of technology companies now offer such services as part of the “digital afterlife” industry, which is worth more than \u00a3100bn, with some people using it as a way to deal with their grief.<\/p>\n

Cardiff University’s Dr Jenny Kidd has led research on so-called deathbots, published in the Cambridge University Press journal Memory, Mind and Media, and described the results as both “fascinating and unsettling”.<\/p>\n

Attempts to communicate with the dead are not new.<\/p>\n

From se\u0301ances to spiritualist mediums, similar practices have existed for centuries.<\/p>\n

But as technology advances, AI has the potential to make them more convincing, and far more scalable.<\/p>\n

In 2024, James Vlahos told the BBC how he recorded his dad’s voice and created an AI chatbot after hearing the devastating news that he was dying from cancer.<\/p>\n

He described how wonderful it was to keep a sense of his memory alive, and while it didn’t remove the pain of his death, he added: “I have this wonderful interactive compendium I can turn to.”<\/p>\n

The Workplace Bereavement support group said it was not seeing widespread use of deathbots, but more curiosity from people.<\/p>\n

“These deathbots and AI tools are only as good as the information they are given,” said founder Jacqueline Gunn.<\/p>\n

“They don’t grow or adapt in the way grief does. For some they may offer a stepping stone, but they cannot be the destination.<\/p>\n

“Grief is a deeply personal human response to death, needing time, understanding and human connection.”<\/p>\n

Working with Eva Nieto McAvoy from King’s College London and Bethan Jones from Cardiff University, Kidd explored how these technologies function in practice.<\/p>\n

They looked into how AI systems are designed to imitate the voices, speech patterns and personalities of people who have died, using their digital traces.<\/p>\n

While they are often marketed as sources of comfort and connection, the researchers say they rely on a simplified understanding of memory, identity and relationships.<\/p>\n

Kidd’s interest in the topic began during the Covid pandemic, when there was a sudden flood of AI-generated animated photographs on social media.<\/p>\n

People were uploading old photographs of ancestors, then watching them blink, smile and move their heads as software “reanimated” their loved ones.<\/p>\n

“These things were really creepy, but really quite interesting as well,” Kidd said.<\/p>\n

“All of a sudden they were everywhere and millions of people were sharing them.<\/p>\n

“That was us stumbling into this kind of work of AI revival.”<\/p>\n

‘I sounded Australian’<\/b><\/p>\n

The team decided to test some of the deathbots for themselves and explored four commercial platforms.<\/p>\n

“It was weird interacting with ourselves in that way but largely unsatisfying because of the technical limitations of these platforms at the moment,” said Kidd.<\/p>\n

In one experiment, Kidd used her own voice data to create a chatbot.<\/p>\n

“It didn’t sound like me, in fact it it sounded quite Australian,” she added.<\/p>\n

Kidd believes the technology will improve, but she is sceptical about whether a large market will emerge.<\/p>\n

“We already have a lot of established rituals and traditions around death,” she said.<\/p>\n

“The fact that there hasn’t really been a take-off technology in this space maybe indicates there isn’t much of a market for it.”<\/p>\n

When asked whether they would want their own families to recreate them digitally after death, the researchers had mixed feelings.<\/p>\n

“My initial gut reaction is if they want to do that and it’s kind of playful, that’s fine,” Kidd said.<\/p>\n

“But if there’s any sense to which, certainly in the future, the persona continues to evolve or says things that I would never say, or has allegiances I would never have, and this begins to mangle people’s actual recollections of me and my values then I think I would have a big problem.”<\/p>\n

Dr Nieto McAvoy said she was not “particularly bothered”.<\/p>\n

“I’m not very religious and I don’t have strong thoughts about the afterlife, once I’m dead, who cares?<\/p>\n

“If it helps them, you know… but it can be misconstrued for sure. And do I want my family to pay for a service… I don’t know, it’s complex.”<\/p>\n

Find more news and analyses on Gambia<\/span> on the Africa Press<\/span> website<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Gambia. If a loved-one died tomorrow, would you want to keep talking to them? Not through memories or saved messages, but through artificial intelligence – a chatbot that uses their texts, emails and voice notes, to reply in their tone and style. A growing number of technology companies now offer such services as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":93716,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[260],"class_list":["post-93717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-miscellaneous","tag-gambia"],"yoast_head":"\nI Turned myself into an Ai-Generated Deathbot - Gambia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"-article-header-tag"> Africa-Press - Gambia. 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