deathbot

English

Etymology

From death +‎ -bot.

Noun

deathbot (plural deathbots)

1. (colloquial, artificial intelligence) A chatbot created to impersonate a deceased person, based on their digital remains, such as messages, voice notes, and images.

   Synonym: griefbot

   • 2024 July 31, Kate Lindsay, “No One Is Ready for Digital Immortality”, in The Atlantic‎, archived from the original on 31 July 2024:

     Train a chatbot off a dead person’s emails or texts, and you can forever message a digital approximation of them. There is enough demand for these “deathbots” that many companies, including HereAfter AI and StoryFile, specialize in them.

   • 2025 August 10, Harriet Sherwood, “Digital resurrection: fascination and fear over the rise of the deathbot”, in The Guardian‎, →ISSN, archived from the original on 12 August 2025:

     But deathbots may also provide “sanitised, rosy” representations of a person, said Cholbi. For example, someone creating a deathbot of their late granny may choose not to include her casual racism or other unappealing aspects of her personality in material fed into an AI generator.

See also

• digital ghost
• thanatechnology