Chatbots of the dead are AI technologies that simulate conversations with the deceased using their personal data. There are important questions about the ethics of these technologies, but the authors are optimistic, arguing for them to be viewed as artistic props, fostering imagination and creative engagement with memory, similar to participatory theater or memoir writing.
A chatbot based on someone’s data is like an improv actor who has studied a backstory or character sketch in order to performatively represent a character based on that person, like a Civil War soldier at a historical reenactment, an Elvis impersonator, or King Pentheus in Dionysus in 69 (1969), the participatory rendition of Euripides’ play The Bacchae. Chatbots of the dead, like participatory theatre, allow the audience to directly participate in these fictional worlds, thereby becoming imaginatively acquainted with the real person to whom the character corresponds.