AI Chatbots Let People Keep Dead Loved Ones Alive. Should They?
Our own Walker Posey was featured in a Rolling Stone piece exploring one of the more provocative frontiers of grief and technology: AI "memorial companions" and avatars that let people keep talking to loved ones after they've passed.
As the National Funeral Directors Association's spokesman, Walker offered a thoughtful, measured perspective amid a story full of big questions. While funeral homes have embraced AI for practical tasks like writing obituaries, he explained, tools like chatbots of the deceased are a long way from becoming standard, and for good reason. "We're in a profession that is still largely dependent on human connection," he noted, capturing why the industry moves carefully when it comes to something as tender as grief. The article weighs the comfort these tools can offer against the concerns raised by grief experts about their potential harms.