In the Press

In early October 2016, The Verge published an article Speak, Memory about a woman who has created a bot of her friend that can have a conversation like her deceased friend.

Related Projects

Eterni.me

In Science Fiction
Laurie Frankel has a novel Goodbye for Now that explores the idea of creating software that can interact with people in a manner similar to a deceased person so that they can have a proper closure. Here is the official synopsis of the novel.

When Sam Elling creates an algorithm to pair people with their soul mates online, he meets Meredith, his own perfect match. But when Meredith’s grandmother Livvie dies unexpectedly, Sam puts his algorithm to even better use: it compiles Livvie’s old emails and video chats to create a computer simulation so that Meredith can say goodbye. It’s not supernatural; it’s computer science, and Meredith loves it—too much to keep to herself. Together, she and Sam open RePose to help others who have lost a loved one. Business takes off, but for every person who just wants to say goodbye, there’s someone else who can’t let go. This twenty-first-century love story asks what would happen if saying goodbye were just the beginning, and shows how love can take on a life of its own.

The BBC TV series Black Mirror has an episode which explores the premise of having a computer simulate the personality of a deceased person and having it interact with people that it knew. The simulation breaks down when confronted with an unfamiliar situation.