{"id":31408,"date":"2025-07-10T09:00:05","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T09:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=31408"},"modified":"2025-07-10T09:26:06","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T09:26:06","slug":"spiritualism-a-i-griefbots-and-why-we-still-need-to-talk-to-the-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=31408","title":{"rendered":"Spiritualism, A.I. Griefbots and Why We Still Need to Talk to the Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Two years after Andy O\u2019Donnell\u2019s father died of Alzheimer\u2019s in 2021, O\u2019Donnell decided he wanted to hear his voice again. He downloaded some videos of his father from Facebook, edited out other voices, and then uploaded to an A.I. voice platform the pure audio of his father talking. Then he copied in the text of the Lord\u2019s Prayer \u2014 something he\u2019d heard his father recite hundreds of times in his life \u2014 and \u201cThe Night Before Christmas,\u201d and asked the artificial intelligence to create an audio file of his father reading both poems.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter getting over the initial shock of hearing the incredibly accurate representation of his voice, I definitely cried,\u201d he said, \u201cbut it was more of a cry of relief to be able to hear his voice again because he had such a comforting voice.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was no feeling of eeriness one might associate with hearing voices from the dead, he said. And when he shared his recording with his siblings, they all had a similar reaction. \u201cIt definitely aided us in our grieving process in a positive way.\u201d O\u2019Donnell, who lives in Montgomery, Ala., then experimented with recording A.I. speaking in his father\u2019s voice with simple words of encouragement for his family members.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Donnell, now 50, was raised Catholic and believes in some form of life after death, but not necessarily the traditional conception of heaven that he was raised with. But even though he knew this was not his father speaking to him from beyond the grave, it remained a powerful experience. \u201cI don\u2019t know that it brings closure but it definitely brings a measure of comfort to hear his voice again,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A belief that our loved ones are still accessible in some form after death is one that\u2019s found in nearly every culture around the globe, from Japanese Buddhists to the Gullah people of South Carolina. In the Hebrew Scriptures, Saul tried to outlaw the practice of employing mediums to speak to the dead, but in time, he violated his own prohibition, secretly visiting a medium to contact Samuel, who had anointed him the first king of Israel.<\/p>\n

The desire to reach out across the divide between life and death remains one of the most primal desires we have. The A.I. \u201cgriefbot\u201d is just the latest iteration of that desire, often involving technology in some form, and based on a fundamental belief in life after death. According to a Pew Research report<\/a> from 2023, over half of American adults said they had been visited by a dead relative, and 30 percent said they had talked back.<\/p>\n

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Two years after Andy O\u2019Donnell\u2019s father died of Alzheimer\u2019s in 2021, O\u2019Donnell decided he wanted to hear his voice again. He downloaded some videos of his father from Facebook, edited out other voices, and then uploaded to an A.I. voice platform the pure audio of his father talking. Then he copied in the text of the Lord\u2019s Prayer \u2014 something he\u2019d heard his father recite hundreds of times in his life \u2014 and \u201cThe Night Before Christmas,\u201d and asked the artificial intelligence to create an audio file of his father reading both poems.\u201cAfter getting over the initial shock of hearing the incredibly accurate representation of his voice, I definitely cried,\u201d he said, \u201cbut it was more of a cry of relief to be able to hear his voice again because he had such a comforting voice.\u201dThere was no feeling of eeriness one might associate with hearing voices from the dead, he said. And when he shared his recording with his siblings, they all had a similar reaction. \u201cIt definitely aided us in our grieving process in a positive way.\u201d O\u2019Donnell, who lives in Montgomery, Ala., then experimented with recording A.I. speaking in his father\u2019s voice with simple words of encouragement for his family members.O\u2019Donnell, now 50, was raised Catholic and believes in some form of life after death, but not necessarily the traditional conception of heaven that he was raised with. But even though he knew this was not his father speaking to him from beyond the grave, it remained a powerful experience. \u201cI don\u2019t know that it brings closure but it definitely brings a measure of comfort to hear his voice again,\u201d he said.A belief that our loved ones are still accessible in some form after death is one that\u2019s found in nearly every culture around the globe, from Japanese Buddhists to the Gullah people of South Carolina. In the Hebrew Scriptures, Saul tried to outlaw the practice of employing mediums to speak to the dead, but in time, he violated his own prohibition, secretly visiting a medium to contact Samuel, who had anointed him the first king of Israel.The desire to reach out across the divide between life and death remains one of the most primal desires we have. The A.I. \u201cgriefbot\u201d is just the latest iteration of that desire, often involving technology in some form, and based on a fundamental belief in life after death. According to a Pew Research report from 2023, over half of American adults said they had been visited by a dead relative, and 30 percent said they had talked back.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31410,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31408"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31411,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31408\/revisions\/31411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}