Editor’s note: Nigel Mulligan is Assistant Professor in Psychotherapy at Dublin City University’s School of Nursing, Psychotherapy and Community Health, Ireland.
We all experience loss and grief. Imagine, however, not having to say goodbye to your loved ones, being able to virtually recreate them to talk and find out how they feel.
In 2020, on his 40th birthday, kim kardashian received from her husband at the time, Kanye West, a hologram of her late father, Robert Kardashian. Kim Kardashian reportedly reacted with disbelief and joy to her father’s virtual appearance at her birthday party. The possibility of seeing a long-dead loved one, whom you miss dearly, move and talk again can be comforting for those left behind.
After all, “resurrecting” a deceased loved one may seem miraculous – and possibly a little scary – but what impact does it have on our health? The “digital ghosts” of artificial intelligence (AI) Are they a help or a hindrance to the grieving process?
As a psychotherapist investigating how AI technologies can be used to improve therapeutic interventionsI am intrigued by the advent of ghostbots (ghost robots). But I’m also more than a little concerned about the potential effects of this technology on the mental health of those who use it, especially those who are grieving. Resurrecting dead people as avatars has the potential to cause more harm than good, further perpetuating confusion, stress, depression, paranoia, and in some cases, psychosis.
Recent developments in artificial intelligence have led to the creation of ChatGPT and others chatbots that allow users to have sophisticated conversations, similar to those with humans.
Using technology deep fakeAI software can create a interactive virtual representation of a deceased person using their digital content, such as photographs, emails and videos.
A few years ago, these creations were just science fiction fantasy, but today they are a reality.
Help or hindrance?
You digital ghosts they can be a comfort to the bereaved, helping to reconnect with lost loved ones. They can give the user the opportunity to say some things or ask questions that they never had the opportunity to ask when the deceased person was alive.
But the strange similarity of ghostbots with a lost loved one may not be as positive as it seems. Studies suggest that these digital ghosts should only be used as a temporary help with grief to avoid potentially harmful emotional dependence.
You AI ghosts can be harmful to people’s mental health by interfering with the grieving process.
Grieving takes time and there are many different phases which can occur over many years. When recently bereaved, people experiencing grief may often think about their deceased loved one. It is very common for a grieving person dream more intensely with your lost loved one.
The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud was concerned with how human beings react to the experience of loss. He drew attention to the potential difficulties for mourners if there is negativity surrounding a death.
For example, if a person had ambivalent feelings towards someone and that person dies, they may be left with a feeling of guilt. Or if a person died in horrible circumstanceslike a murder, the grieving person may have more difficulty accepting this fact.
Freud referred to this phenomenon as “melancholia,” but it can also be referred to as “complicated grief”. In some extreme cases, a person may have hallucinations in which he sees the person dead and begins to believe that he or she is alive. AI ghost robots, then, can further traumatize a person experiencing complicated grief, and exacerbate associated problems, such as hallucinations.
Chatbot horror
There is also a risk that these ghost bots will say hurtful things to users, or give bad advice to someone who is grieving. Similar generative software like ChatGPT is already widely criticized for giving users wrong information.
Imagine if AI technology went rogue and started making inappropriate comments to the user — a situation experienced by the journalist Kevin Roose in 2023, when a Bing chatbot tried to get him to leave his wife.
It would be very painful if a deceased parent was conjured as an AI ghost by a son or daughter to make comments that they were unloved, disliked, or not their parent’s favorite. Or, in a more extreme scenario, if the ghostbot suggested that the user join him in death, or that he should kill or harm someone.
This may sound like the plot of a horror movie, but it’s not that far off. In 2023, the UK Labor Party proposed a law to stop AI training to incite violence.
This was a response to the attempted assassination of the Queen earlier this year by a man who was encouraged by his girlfriend chatbotwith whom he had an “emotional and sexual” relationship.
Currently, the creators of ChatGPT recognize that the software makes mistakes and is still not completely reliable because it invents information. Who knows how a person’s texts, emails or videos will be interpreted, and what content will be generated by this AI technology?
Either way, it seems that no matter how far this technology advances, there will be a need for considerable control and human oversight.
Forgetting is healthy
This latest technology says a lot about our digital culture of infinite and limitless possibilities.
Data can be stored in the cloud indefinitely, everything can be recovered, and nothing is actually deleted or destroyed. Forgetting is an important element of healthy grief, but to forget, people need to find new and meaningful ways to remember the deceased person.
Birthdays play a critical role in helping mourners not only remember lost loved ones, but they are also opportunities to represent the loss in new ways. Rituals and symbols can mark the end of something, and allow humans to remember properly to forget properly.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
