Concern 574 · Working draft · editorial review in progress
AI grief companions
A grief companion simulates a deceased person using their digital traces, raising questions about consent and the grieving person's needs.
Understanding the concern
Messages, recordings and photographs can help create a familiar style of response. The result is a simulation, not the deceased person speaking anew. That distinction can be emotionally difficult when the voice or wording feels intimate and recognizable.
Ethical research asks whose permission is needed, who controls the simulation and how it can be retired. A relative may want the experience while another finds it distressing. The deceased person's wishes also matter. Claims that such tools heal grief require clinical evidence; philosophical scenarios can identify concerns without proving a treatment benefit or harm.
An example
One family member creates a simulation of a deceased relative that another does not want to encounter.
Illustrative unless identified as a documented case.
Words in plain English
- AI
- Software that learns patterns from examples or uses rules to perform tasks such as recognizing images or generating text. It can make mistakes and does not understand every situation as a person would.
Evidence and its limits
The source is ethical and scenario-based analysis, not a clinical trial of bereavement outcomes.
Hollanek and Nowaczyk-Basinska · Philosophy & Technology 2024 · Ethical analysis
Griefbots, Deadbots, Postmortem Avatars: On Responsible Applications of Generative AI in the Digital Afterlife Industry ↗ (opens in a new tab)Scenario-based analysis of consent, transparency and retirement; not a clinical trial of grief outcomes.
Broader frameworks and background
These resources provide context. They do not establish every claim in this concern.
A question to discuss
Whose consent should be required before a person's likeness is used in a grief companion?
Keep track of different views, what needs checking, and any next step in your own discussion notes.
Open discussion notes →Principles for the conversation
Before you finish · reflect together
Virtues and principles to consider
Virtues are qualities we practice in how we treat people and make choices. They are not scores for judging someone. Use these ideas to explore what a thoughtful response could look like.
Dignity
Dignity means recognizing each person's worth regardless of usefulness, status, or a system's score. People deserve respect and a voice in matters that affect them.
Explain important decisions, avoid humiliating treatment, and keep room for a person's story. Do not treat a prediction as a complete account of who someone is.
Ask together: Does this use treat each person as someone whose experience matters?
Listening
Listening means trying to understand someone's experience before preparing an answer. People who use a service, work with it, or are judged by it may notice problems its designers miss.
Invite people to describe what happened in their own words. Repeat back what you understood and let them correct it. A quiet person or a complaint that is hard to measure may still reveal something important.
Ask together: Whose experience have we not heard yet?
Seeing potential
Seeing potential means recognizing people's capacity to learn, contribute, and grow. It resists reducing someone to a score or to the tasks a machine can perform faster.
Use tools to support people's development. Give learners time, feedback, and real opportunities to practice. A prediction about someone's performance should not close off their future.
Ask together: How could this help people develop abilities they value?
Editorial ratings
These are editorial judgments from the register, not measured probabilities or predictions about your situation.
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