I can conjure up my father in a blink: the woodsy scent of his cologne, the shape of his nimble fingers, the texture of his silver hair, the spread of his smile whenever he looked at me. I can hear his voice, a quiet baritone mostly scrubbed of its Bronx accent. After thirty-two years of hugs, my arms still bear the imprint of his slim, strong body. My right hand remembers holding his left foot as I watched him die.
He was impatient. He suffered fools poorly. He could be maddeningly absent-minded. But he also had a touching purity of heart, a rare innocence. He simply could not understand what motivated people to do bad things. Drivers who cut him off, politicians who lied, businesspeople who cheated—none of it made sense. If he could follow the rules, why couldn’t they?
“I don’t see how anyone could reject their child for being gay,” he said when I came out to him.
He was loving and kind, gentle and funny, searingly brilliant and a total goof. Then he was gone.
Earlier this year, on the eighth anniversary of my father’s death from bacterial pneumonia, I was scrolling through news apps in the laundry room of my building when I noticed an unfamiliar word: “deadbot.” Baited, I clicked. One article led me to dozens of others—and the more I read, the angrier I became.
AI companies have been developing deadbots—also known as griefbots or deathbots—for more than a decade. Their goal is to replicate the presence of a dead loved one in order to assuage, or even entirely avoid, grief. Some are text-based, others use voice simulation, and increasing numbers are fully interactive video avatars. This rapidly expanding field, variously called “death tech,” the “digital afterlife industry,” and the “digital-legacy market,” is currently valued at more than $20 billion.
How dare you, I thought as I read about the tech execs who claim to want to make grief “obsolete.” How dare you try to take my grief away.
Eight years ago, grief was an ocean determined to drown me. I foundered and flailed, spluttered and sank, slammed onto shore and got sucked back out by the tide. Its waters reshaped me, as an ocean shapes a coastline. But as painful as that erosion was, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Grief gave me perspective. It improved my patience, my endurance, and my ability to sit with discomfort. I’m able to be present with other people’s pain, having learned from the precious people who were present with mine. I’m a better friend now, a better daughter, a better lover. A better human being.
Still, I understand the temptation to use technology to alleviate an agony for which society doesn’t prepare us. American culture isn’t set up to model a way to deal with mortality, either our own or anyone else’s. This leaves individuals stranded on their own islands of grief, offered only minimal bereavement leave, expected to continue functioning while mourning on their own. Would being able to talk to a realistic facsimile of my father—to see his face on a screen, hear his voice speaking new words—assuage the pain of losing him?
[Grief’s] waters reshaped me, as an ocean shapes a coastline. But as painful as that erosion was, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
In my case, I don’t think so. A “digital afterlife” is merely a consumerist fantasy. Worse, it robs us of one of our most ancient customs: acknowledging that we are mortal by laying the dead to rest.
Although my father loved technology, he loved humanity more. While reading about death tech, I realized I couldn’t create an avatar of him even if I wanted to. Deadbots are trained using a person’s digital footprint, including texts, emails, videos, and audio recordings. My father’s narrow technological trail goes cold far too quickly for any AI program to learn much about him. But even if I could generate a realistic hologram capable of speaking with his voice, it could never recreate his actual presence, which is often what we miss most when people die. How can we not grieve the loss of a person’s touch, the absence of their scent, the silence of the rooms they no longer inhabit? Do we live our lives so completely through screens that it doesn’t matter? Maybe so, when people are falling in love with their AI companions. But what is love without the electric brush of a hand, that first shy kiss, a lifetime of hugs, or those acts of service we never forget?
I recently made scrambled eggs for breakfast. They tasted just like my father’s—naturally, since he taught me how to cook them. All at once, a memory bloomed: his smiling face peering at me through my bedroom door in the morning light.
“Want some eggs?” he asked, as he always did.
I should have said yes more often, I thought. And the tears came.
Grieving my father is the cost of having loved him. If we’re unwilling to grieve, we are also, in some fundamental way, unwilling to love.
Barrie Kreinik is a writer, actor, singer, and award-winning audiobook narrator based in New York City.
