20/08/2025
When CNN interviewed a dead 17-year-old this week, we crossed a threshold humanity has been approaching for millennia.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/08/journalist-ai-interview-dead-child-joaquin-oliver
The ancients created shrines, death masks, effigies and paintings to preserve the deceased's essence. Victorians photographed their dead children posed as if sleeping. We keep voicemails, re-read old texts, visit graves to share news. For thousands of years, humans have created artifacts and rituals to maintain connection across the boundary of death.
The impulse to honour and converse with our ancestors is profoundly human - perhaps one of the things that makes us most human!
I've been discussing AI in grief quite a lot over the past month. It really is a real mixed bag of can it help or hinder grief?
The fact is AI is here so a bit like a lot of change implemented by tech in end of life, we need to learn to adapt, accept and create parameters where we can -
The issue ofc is that use of AI is often a solo journey rather than a shared experience - it doesn't have to be when used well and creatively but it often is. Grief hits hard when sitting up late at night, on your own, so if there are tools to help you, talk to, it's a very easy road to go down. This all sits hand in hand with the whole education, and dare-I-say re-humanising of death and grieving within our culture. Oh the irony :)
Back to the CNN interview and the digital creation of our dead, perhaps just a couple of questions to begin:
1) Who owns the memory of the person recreated?
2) Ahead of their death, should we request consent from the deceased if they are happy / wish to continue once their physical mortal being has died.
With AI so new to the table of grief, is it something that aids very initial stages and after a period of time it's comfort, use will wane? There is ofc the possibility that those who experience prolonged grief will never move on with their loss.
A bit like with Direct Cremation, the journey and outcomes of not moving through the process of grief has yet to unravel.
Could AI assist those who have had a Direct Cremation? Now That Is Controversial! Answers on a postcard please š
