{"id":414340,"date":"2026-02-08T09:22:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T09:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/414340\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T09:22:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T09:22:07","slug":"i-turned-myself-into-an-ai-generated-deathbot-heres-what-i-found","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/414340\/","title":{"rendered":"I turned myself into an AI-generated deathbot – here’s what I found"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2024, James Vlahos told the BBC how he recorded his dad’s voice and created an AI chatbot<\/a> after hearing the devastating news that he was dying from cancer.<\/p>\n

He described how wonderful it was to keep a sense of his memory alive, and while it didn’t remove the pain of his death, he added: “I have this wonderful interactive compendium I can turn to.”<\/p>\n

The Workplace Bereavement, external<\/a> support group said it was not seeing widespread use of deathbots, but more curiosity from people.<\/p>\n

“These deathbots and AI tools are only as good as the information they are given,” said founder Jacqueline Gunn.<\/p>\n

“They don’t grow or adapt in the way grief does. For some they may offer a stepping stone, but they cannot be the destination. <\/p>\n

“Grief is a deeply personal human response to death, needing time, understanding and human connection.”<\/p>\n

Working with Eva Nieto McAvoy from King’s College London and Bethan Jones from Cardiff University, Kidd explored how these technologies function in practice. <\/p>\n

They looked into how AI systems are designed to imitate the voices, speech patterns and personalities of people who have died, using their digital traces. <\/p>\n

While they are often marketed as sources of comfort and connection, the researchers say they rely on a simplified understanding of memory, identity and relationships.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2024, James Vlahos told the BBC how he recorded his dad’s voice and created an AI chatbot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-414340","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}