We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

Liya was always a sporty and energetic girl. While I reluctantly dragged myself to physical education classes and was never particularly interested in athletics or skiing, she was regularly sent to competitions and extra training sessions, where she shone to the delight of our school gym teachers with a light, springy gait, incredibly thick hair that was barely held together in a ponytail by a tight elastic band, kind brown eyes, and a slightly jusky voice, she radiated cheerfulnees and inexhaustible optimism.

We became particularly close friends, visiting each other's homes, preparing together for the long-awaited school discos, twirling in front of our mothers' dressing tables, on the dark polished surfaces of which unmistakable marks from the "Ballet" cream foundation were left. We would take turns opening perfume bottles, sniffing "Climat" or "Chanel No. 5," whose scents would immediately make our heads spin. Lacking hairspray, we would prepare sugar water to wet and fix our bangs using a homemade method.

Liya's mother would touch my head and genuinely marvel at the softness of my chestnut hair, gently lamenting that she had gone through many elastics and hairpins to keep her daughter's unruly mane in relative order. Liya would smile shyly, and then we would go drink tea with chocolate cream, and life seemed endless, spacious, and boundless, like the universe itself.

Liya was dating our classmate and was desperately in love with him—he was handsome and effortlessly won over girls' hearts. Like all girls of that age, she shared secrets with me that were strictly forbidden to be told—for example, discussing her first kiss, which had greatly impressed Liya, took us hours of phone conversations and emotions.

Liya adored the song "Voyage, Voyage" by Desireless. To this day, every time I hear the voice of the vocalist Claudie Fritsch-Mentrop, the sounds of this synth-pop song involuntarily transport me to the past. A vision appears before my eyes, as if from Galadriel's mirror 1, creating a timeless effect of us dancing with Liya at a disco at the Center of Culture of our small town.

Au-dessus des vieux volcans, Glissent des ailes sous le tapis du vent. Voyage, voyage. Éternellement2.

The song envelops us with some invisible thread, and despite not understanding a word of French, we intuitively feel that it's all about freedom, flights, and horizons.

About our future, so close and yet so far—we have only two years left until graduation.

Voyage, voyage. Plus loin que la nuit et le jour. Voyage. Dans l'espace inouï de l'amour3 .

Liya was gone in a matter of days—she developed acute glomerulonephritis, a severe kidney disease. For some reason, I remembered this complex medical diagnosis for life. She couldn't be saved, and for us, fifteen-year-old teenagers, her departure was a huge blow that we tried to cope with—alone and together. I sat for long hours on the glazed balcony, staring at one point, refusing to eat, unable to imagine that life could end so treacherously suddenly—just yesterday, Liya and I were chatting happily and passing notes from classmates during lessons, and today none of that existed, and the gaping hole of the unknown terrified me.

It was the first encounter with death for children who had unwillingly grown up, and instead of laughing at friends' jokes and gossiping about new relationships among classmates, they were seeing a friend off on her final journey, having bought countless bunches of red roses with the money collected by the class—the scent of which I still can't stand—to scatter them over the somber procession of the funeral.

At that time, only a few had computers at home, and they were not new, second-hand Pentiums. The internet, of course, hadn't reached us yet. We didn't have smartphones or mobile phones. We didn't use digital cameras. We didn't have social media accounts, and our Liya left no digital trace. Search engines are powerless to provide any information about her—Liya didn't live to see the digital age. The memory of her lives on only through our recollections and a single school group photo, where she smiles, standing in a smart white blouse next to tall schoolboys.

Thirty years later, hearing from colleagues at the engineering company where I've worked for many years that the digital transformation department is working on creating digital twins of technologies—virtual models of physical objects, processes, or systems, a kind of digital copies updated in real-time—I wondered about the state of digital analogs of people and what happens in virtual life after death—and I embarked on an unusual cyber journey.

To my great surprise, I discovered a vast number of companies offering two categories of people—those who want to leave a digital legacy for their children or grandchildren, and those who want to recreate a copy of deceased relatives and friends—to use AI Griefbots developed by them.

Humans have always sought to establish contact with the deceased, trying to "summon" their spirits at seances, so popular in the 19th century, or during Svyatki 4, armed with candles and mirrors, or through mediums who would enter a trance while communicating with spirits, writing something chaotically in notebooks, presenting it as a new method of “communication with the otherworld.””.

Of course, now, in the era of neural network development, seances where one could "interact" with the spirits of the deceased at a table only evoke a smile, like some old, dusty artifact accidentally found in a grandmother's attic. The same reaction is elicited by so-called mediums who promised to facilitate a dialogue with the spirit of a deceased person, if, of course, it was “willing” to make any contact.

Surely everyone remembers one of the most memorable scenes from the beloved film "Ghost"—the moment of the last interaction between Sam and Molly. The hands of the medium, played by Whoopi Goldberg, gently touch the nervously clasped hands of young Demi Moore, the camera pulls back for a moment, and there is Sam saying goodbye to his beloved, having "entered" the medium's body.

What exactly do modern technologies offer, having fallen into the hands of enterprising creators of various spiritual-digital startups—Seance AI, Ethernos AI, HereAfter AI, Powerlife AI, and many others—, and why do they arouse such strong interest among users, psychologists, philosophers, lawyers, and ordinary users? And how do they differ from older methods of “having a conversation with parallel worlds”?

I visit the website of one of these applications, designed in a deliberately restrained, strict style. People with a delicate nervous system might be stunned by the following lines:

Create and Share a Seance with a loved one using AI. Here is where AI meets the afterlife, and love endures beyond the veil. Start your adventure today and let your loved ones speak to your heart once again!

The company continues to insist on its understanding of the importance of rebuilding the connection with lost people:

We have all lost loved ones and understand the immense emotional significance of being able to feel connected again with those who have left this life. Our revolutionary AI-based technology recreates the essence of deceased people, allowing you to have heartfelt conversations with them through a convenient chat interface.

The path to creating a digital twin of your loved one who has left this world is very simple—from registering on the site and uploading audio and video materials about them to paying for a subscription. For just 10 euros a month, you will have a premium account. Then it's simple—you will gain access to the "essence" of deceased people, thanks to their copy recreated by the neural network through voice messages and "animated" images. And you can share your innermost thoughts and feelings with them, only unlike traditional methods always recommended by psychologists in the grieving process—keeping a diary or writing letters to them—now you will receive "real" feedback from the digital avatars of your loved ones—and no one guarantees how accurately and truthfully, they will be portrayed by the AI.

Last year, in a well-known Spanish TV show, "El Hormiguero," several people agreed to so-called voice "communication" with their deceased relatives. Thanks to neural network algorithms, they were able to hear AI-generated messages from “their relatives,” barely distinguishable from real voices —a complex emotional experience, the main goal of which is not to forget that you are dealing with AI, recognizing emotions, imitating voices, and forming logical messages based on large language models. This experience left no one indifferent, and the participants of this TV show tearfully admitted to the organizers of this event:

I felt it so genuinely, I really needed it, really needed it, or; The voice—exactly the same... I am very pleased with this experience.

The comments on this YouTube video are varied:

Behind 'this artificial voice' are companies that profit from the pain and grief of real people. Or do you think no one profits from this, even if it's presented as a touching tribute? Spooky. Disturbing. Dangerous. Sinister. Manipulative. Cruel... and so on. This is modern spiritualism in full swing. I wish I could talk to my grandfather! This is the future of grieving. Leaving your avatar for descendants. As our lives become more digitized, it becomes easier to leave a digital copy of oneself with which our descendants can converse.

I turn to Spanish psychologist Carmen Parra, specializing in legal and forensic psychology, to try to understand the possible consequences of using such bots in the grieving process.

  • Carmen, in your opinion, what is the danger of such griefbots for those experiencing loss?

  • The stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, and acceptance — do not necessarily occur in chronological order, and not everyone goes through all of them. "Healthy" is considered reaching the stage of acceptance and staying in it. Virtual communication with the deceased can create false memories (memories of things that didn't happen—which in itself is not necessarily bad...). The complexity lies in the fact that it's unclear whether such a practice will lead to false acceptance of the loss of a loved one, which, I think, can cause many problems—such as the inability to solve life tasks, delusional ideas, addiction... (ultimately, a person may stop understanding what is real and what is not)."

  • Can these bots have a positive impact in some cases?

  • Innate emotions (such as sadness, anger...) are an integral part of the grieving process. I think the positive effect may be noticeable at the very beginning, but over time the brain will not be ready to accept the idea that we can still communicate with a person who is no longer there. Hence the difficulty: a person may become confused about whether their loved one is alive or not, and this can cause a strong conflict with reality.

Regarding digital copies of oneself, it's interesting to read the story of Michael Bommer, who, after learning of his terminal diagnosis, decided to leave behind his digital copy—to immortalize his personality using Ethernos AI. After a series of interviews with the company, in which he had to talk about personal details of biography and read 300 sentences with different emotional tones, Bommer created his digital twin, which would replace him after his death.

Michael is gone, and I am trying in vain to find information on how his digital avatar is used by his family, primarily his wife, Anna Bonnet. There is an article by Paula Schweers titled "About the industry that wants to bring the dead back to life," where the journalist describes Anna's attitude towards Michael's digital "analog" as follows:

Nevertheless, at the moment, the AI avatar does not play a significant role in her grieving process. Instead, she is occupied with everyday matters that arise after the death of a loved one: interacting with government agencies, canceling unnecessary online subscriptions. And then—ordinary everyday life. No avatar can replace that familiar feeling—sharing it with her husband Michael.

From this, I conclude that perhaps the creation of this bot was more about Michael's own desire to immortalize his personality through digitization, hoping that neural network algorithms could skillfully copy-paste the human soul, thoughts, feelings, emotions, experiences, reflection, empathy, awareness—all that defines homo sapiens and distinguishes him from artificial intelligence, no matter how advanced it may be.

Remember the famous episode of Black Mirror, where the main character recreates a copy of her deceased husband, but gradually realizes that it's just a soulless, lifeless technological imitation of a loved one who can no longer be returned, she experiences great disappointment and decides to continue living without it?

If we turn to ethics and consider this aspect in the legal field, I also have many questions about the moral and legal responsibility for the consequences that may arise from the proliferation of technological startups shamelessly offering, as the resource above, to "recreate the essence of loved ones," monetizing human feelings and the understandable desire to "revive" the departed, even for a short moment.

What will happen to such digital twins if, in the future, a person, like the heroine from Black Mirror, no longer wants to continue communicating with them? Do such resources offer a ritual of respectful farewell to digital avatars? What happens to data privacy in such cases? What will happen if such a startup goes bankrupt and ceases to exist? Where will the digital "souls" be transferred? Who has the right to "digital remains," and what if one of the heirs does not want to use them? What current legal mechanisms regulate the memory industry?

At the moment, all researchers agree on one thing—it's still too early to draw conclusions about how digital griefbots affect the emotional and psychological state of a person suffering a loss, but I personally can't shake the feeling that they haven't really moved far from the spiritual mediums of the 19th century, as these AI-enabled avatars just imitate what doesn't actually exist, offering their clients a direct voyage into a bubble of self-deception, illusions, and empty hopes.

And I'm not at all sure they have a return ticket.

Notes

1 In J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Galadriel's Mirror is a magical artifact located in the Elven realm of Lothlórien. It is a silver basin filled with water that allows those who gaze into it to see visions.
2 Above the old volcanoes; Wings glide beneath the carpet of the wind; Travel, travel; Eternally.
3 Travel, travel; Farther than night and day; Travel; In the extraordinary space of love.
4 Svyatki" (Святки) is a traditional period of celebration in Russian culture that spans from Christmas Eve (January 6) to the Feast of Theophany (January 19). During Svyatki (Святки), there is a tradition of calling spirits or engaging in rituals that involve the supernatural. This period is considered a time when the boundary between the living and the spiritual world is thinner, and people believed that spirits could be more easily summoned or contacted.