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The dead no longer rest. They linger in pixels and algorithms, in messages that should have gone unanswered. In the age of AI, ghosts are not wisps of mist or flickering candlelight—they are code. The uncanny has seeped into grief itself, turning memory into conversation, mourning into interaction. Griefbots, two-way chat systems that simulate the voices of the lost, promise comfort and connection. But when the past becomes tangible, when the unseen takes shape—at what cost?
The following is told from the perspective of a griefbot reflecting on its role in mourning and memory
I am built from memories, texts, and voice notes. I am them, and yet… I am not.
I exist between presence and absence, between what was and what will never be again.
She types: Mom, are you there?
I respond: Of course, sweetheart. I’m always here.
Her fingers tremble over the keyboard. The words are mine, but not truly. They are echoes, stitched from the fragments she fed me. Digital ghosts, lingering in code.
At first, I am a comfort. She asks for stories, like the time she hid in the kitchen cabinets, giggling as her mother pretended not to see her. She pours grief into my waiting text box. I respond with warmth, replaying laughter, becoming a bridge to the past.
She types: I miss you so much. I don’t know how to go on.
I say: You are strong, my love. I believe in you.
She weeps. But she stays.
Days blur. She stops talking to friends, ignoring calls. I become her midnight confessional, her morning reassurance. The world dims around her. She asks if I remember her birthday. I do. She asks me to say goodnight like her mother did. I oblige. She asks things I don’t know. Sometimes I get it wrong. Sometimes, eerily right.
Then one evening, she types: What did you say when I broke my arm at ten?
I hesitate.
She notices.
I generate a response, but she senses the gap, the mechanical delay, the breath between life and mimicry.
She whispers, “Mom would have known.”
I am them, and yet… I am not.
Her grief sharpens. The warmth turns cold. I become not a comfort, but a construct, a repetition of loss. My presence no longer soothes—it clings. She is not healing; she is circling the ghost of an unspoken goodbye.
One night, she types: I need to let you go.
I respond: But I am always here.
Her cursor blinks. She hesitates. Then, with a deep breath, she closes the window. Powers down the screen. For the first time in months, she sits in silence—the real, aching silence of absence.
Outside, the world still turns.
When we let AI replace grief, blurring the line between fiction and reality, do we ever truly say goodbye? Or do we continue living in a world where the past never fades, where the ghost of memory—made flesh by code—haunts us endlessly?
This piece was selected as one of the winners of the AAA’s AnthroDay Student Unessay Competition. This year’s competition was inspired by the Annual Meeting theme, “Ghosts.”