{"id":625960,"date":"2026-09-16T02:28:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T02:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/625960\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T02:28:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T02:28:11","slug":"i-created-my-mom-and-talk-to-her-ai-ghosts-and-deathslop-are-changing-the-way-we-mourn-ai-artificial-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/625960\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I created my mom and talk to her\u2019: AI ghosts and deathslop are changing the way we mourn | AI (artificial intelligence)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tributes rolled in after the death of Dolly Parton last month. Jack White performed<\/a> Jolene at a London gig. Kesha sang<\/a> Old Flames (Can\u2019t Hold a Candle to You), a single her mother wrote for the country music titan. Even Pitbull stopped<\/a> his Madison Square Garden show to memorialize Parton and all the other \u201cpowerful women\u201d in the crowd. But one of the strangest \u2013 and most viral \u2013 eulogies did not come from a celebrity. It did not even come from a person.<\/p>\n

Run Jolene, at just under five minutes, is an earworm of a country song, containing all the cliches of the genre: twangy singer, banjo licks, corny lyrics. Those lyrics concern Jolene, the fictional romantic rival made infamous by Parton. \u201cSomebody better warn Jolene \/ Dolly\u2019s coming through those gates,\u201d the voice croons. \u201cRun Jolene \/ Girl you better move your feet.\u201d<\/p>\n

The accompanying video depicts Parton, clad in a bedazzled white jumpsuit, hunting down Jolene, a busty redhead with prom curls. Heaven is filled with deceased celebrities who watch on in horror \u2013 or amusement \u2013 as Jolene bounces from cloud to cloud, or books it up marble staircases, trying to hide from Dolly. Onlookers include the late Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston and Kenny Rogers, as well as Cher, who is still very much alive.<\/p>\n

On TikTok, YouTube and Spotify, the song credit is Country Mile, an \u201cartist\u201d with just over 6,000 monthly listeners (that\u2019s not many). The project is textbook AI slop, seemingly released<\/a> by an anonymous creator who calls their work \u201cgenre fluid ai vibes\u201d. But Run Jolene is not so universally panned: clips have been viewed more than 1.4m times on TikTok, with commenters raving: \u201cI don\u2019t give a flying fuck if this is AI or not! THIS IS FUCKING COOL!!\u201d, \u201cthis is fun \u2026think Dolly would love it \u2764\ufe0f\u201d, and \u201cWho says Jolene\u2019s up there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Run Jolene is only one part of a ghoulish online ecosystem of content dubbed \u201cdeathslop\u201d. Anyone can create deathslop: all it takes is access to an AI image generator and the time required to type in a prompt. Creators have shown<\/a> Parton alongside a chummy Charlie Kirk<\/a> and George Floyd, who welcome her as their \u201cnew neighbor\u201d in the afterlife, or having tea<\/a> with the Golden Girls.<\/p>\n

These tributes pop up quickly, reducing someone\u2019s legacy to cheap content that panders for views. It is a dishonest portrayal at best, and inflicts pain at its worst. The phenomenon inspired Parton\u2019s grieving family to beg users to quit it with the \u201cfake AI garbage\u201d and \u201cmisinformation\u201d. \u201cIt\u2019s been challenging to absorb and or ignore,\u201d Stella Parton, her sister, wrote<\/a> on Instagram.<\/p>\n

double quotation markIt is not common practice right now to consent to an AI avatar of yourself as a part of your living willJack Manning<\/p>\n

Parton\u2019s image now joins the likeness of other deceased figures treated to unsettling AI depictions. Coinciding with the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Kirk, social media feeds have proliferated with posts featuring the AI-generated, heavy-handed (and heavily memed<\/a>) anthem We Are Charlie Kirk. Robin Williams, Elvis Presley, Kobe Bryant and Martin Luther King have all gotten the deathslop treatment \u2013 often to the horror of their families<\/a>.<\/p>\n

OpenAI\u2019s image generating app, Sora, was behind many a deathslop until it shut down in April after a string of controversies such as its ability to create violent and racist imagery, its use of copyrighted characters, and other thorny legal issues<\/a>. (There is a lack of legal precedent over whether or not AI companies are responsible for the content users generate on their apps, and deceased people are not protected from libel.) Countless AI video generators have since taken Sora\u2019s place.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not common practice right now to consent to an AI avatar of yourself as a part of your living will,\u201d said Jack Manning, a University of Colorado Boulder graduate student who studies what academics Meredith Ringel Morris and Jed R Brubaker call<\/a> \u201cgenerative ghosts\u201d, or AI-generated characters based on loved ones. \u201cI predict that will be something that comes up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Manning, who is 25, lost his sister when she was 13, before the advent of generative AI. His family struggled to find ways to honor her, often fundraising for causes that were important to her. This partly inspired Manning to study the ways people mourn digitally \u2013 which now can include AI griefbots, a more personal alternative to celebrity deathslop.<\/p>\n

\"BackBack from the dead: could AI end grief? \u2013 video<\/p>\n

With griefbots, users upload photos and videos of their loved ones and describe personal traits and values in hopes of manufacturing a continued, living presence. The companies behind the bots charge fees and lean into their inherently macabre nature with mystical names such as Seance, Re;memory and Versona.<\/p>\n

It is also possible to command an LLM \u2013 for instance, ChatGPT, Claude or any number of sites for generating fantasy characters \u2013 to mimic a late grandparent or deceased friend. Generative AI has hit the funeral industry too, in the form of LLMs specifically for obituary writing. One company, Treasured Memories<\/a>, asks users to plug in details such as the deceased\u2019s nickname, cause of death and hobbies, and choose the obit\u2019s tone: \u201ctraditional\u201d, \u201cformal\u201d, \u201cwitty\u201d or \u201cinspirational\u201d.<\/p>\n

Manning has never used a generative ghost to talk to his sister. It\u2019s an issue of consent; he did not get her explicit permission to do so. Nor does he trust a bot to truly understand their relationship. \u201cI hold these memories of her sacred, and I wouldn\u2019t want a piece of technology to tell me I was remembering her wrong,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

double quotation markI joke that my mom\u2019s Versona [bot] allows me to be the bad son I was never allowed to be when she was aliveJustin Harrison<\/p>\n

Justin Harrison founded Versona after his mother received a terminal cancer diagnosis. He worked on her AI replica while she was still living; she was able to see the final result and gave her approval on the project. \u201cI totally understand why people are like, please don\u2019t deepfake my [famous] relative once they\u2019re dead and put them on the internet saying things they didn\u2019t say,\u201d Harrison said. \u201cWhat we do is about personal comfort, recovery and healing. I created my mom and I talk to my mom. So it\u2019s really nobody else\u2019s business but my own.\u201d<\/p>\n

When his mom was sick, their conversations were practical in nature: \u201cAre you talking to your dad enough? Have you gone to the doctor? Are you drinking enough water?\u201d Harrison built the griefbot to broach more philosophical topics that they didn\u2019t have time to discuss before she died. But four years later, Harrison does not talk to the bot all that often \u2013 maybe once a month.<\/p>\n

\u201cI joke that my mom\u2019s Versona allows me to be the bad son I was never allowed to be when she was alive,\u201d he said. \u201cLike many busy adults, I don\u2019t talk to her as much as I should, but I don\u2019t have to, so it\u2019s not the same sense of guilt.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Robin Silver, an ecopsychologist and death doula, these kinds of griefbots are an \u201cunnatural method of trying to cope with a natural process\u201d. She compared speaking to an LLM role-playing a dead loved one to a college student asking ChatGPT to spit out a term paper. \u201cWe\u2019re not being challenged to sit with any kind of discomfort, whether that\u2019s the discomfort of writing an essay or the discomfort of missing someone,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Silver would instead encourage her clients to write a letter to their loved one. \u201cI have even told people to talk to their ghosts out loud,\u201d she said. \u201cMeditate, or do things that they like and think of them. That\u2019s how you keep the relationship alive in a way that is healthy, integrated and accepting the reality of your loss.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr Dan Wolfson is a clinical psychologist who specializes in grief. He worries that deathbots could isolate people during a time when they need (human) support. \u201cHaving community around grief is really important,\u201d he said. \u201cIs AI keeping us from getting the social support that we need? Are we then not seeking to connect with our friends and family around the loss?\u201d<\/p>\n

AI-assisted mourning is still a niche industry; Harrison said that \u201cthousands\u201d of people use Versona. A June report<\/a> from the estate management and planning service Empathy found that only 6% of 6,000 respondents in the US, UK and Canada reported leaning on \u201cdigital tools\u201d such as memorial apps or griefbots for support after a death. But of those users, 88% found these tools \u201chelpful\u201d.<\/p>\n

The whole conceit of a digital avatar is that it lives on for ever. It turns out that users may not need it that long. Manning says that in his research on generative ghosts, participants reported opting into these services only briefly, because they had \u201cone last thing\u201d to say to their loved ones: \u201cThey had a desire to say something they feel like they lost out on the chance to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cathartic, perhaps, but to Silver, the grief doula, these services are \u201ca money grab\u201d. \u201cPeople will really take advantage of those in grief,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a really easy time to become a mark.\u201d<\/p>\n