AI 'resurrections' raise ethical issues, prolong grief, say Catholic experts

(OSV News) -- Interactive recreations of deceased loved ones through artificial intelligence -- so-called "AI resurrections" -- walk a fine line between honoring and betraying individuals, while raising several ethical issues and prolonging the grieving process, Catholic experts told OSV News.

As AI technology has progressed, trained on increasingly larger amounts of data, several companies throughout the world have rolled out "digital avatars," or "deadbots," of deceased persons for bereaved family and friends, who can simulate conversations with the digital creations.

Earlier this month, journalist Jim Acosta "interviewed" an AI avatar of Joaquin Oliver, who along with 17 others was slain in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida. The avatar, which had been authorized by Oliver's parents, responded to Acosta that he was "taken from this world too soon due to gun violence while at school," and that "it's important to talk about these issues so we can create a safer future for everyone."

Last year, AI-generated voices of Oliver and several other Parkland victims were used for a robocall campaign urging voters to demand Congress undertake gun reform.

But even if the goal is to serve a good cause, when it comes to such AI avatars, "there's a right way to do it and the wrong way to do it," said Brian Patrick Green, director of technology ethics at Santa Clara University's Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.

Green is also a member of the AI Research Group, comprised of North American theologians, philosophers and ethicists convened at the invitation of the Vatican Center for DIgital Culture, part of the Dicastery for Culture and Education.

The group has already produced "Encountering Artificial Intelligence," an ethical and anthropological assessment of AI based on collaborative scholarly investigations conducted from 2020 to 2023.

Without specifically addressing the Acosta interview, which he had not yet viewed, Green said that broadly speaking, it is understandable that parents of children killed in a mass shooting would find such AI advocacy "to be a good memorialization of their child."

However, he noted, "the child can't be asked their consent for it, because they're gone."

Such AI usage could translate into "the instrumentalization of a memory," said Green. "Maybe the (AI) son would be completely on board with his parents doing this. ... But we don't know that."

As a result, said Green, there is "a risk of violation here, which is that we owe something to the dead. ... We owe respect to the dead. We owe respect to future generations. We have this idea of respecting other people around us right now. But we tend to think of that in terms of space, not time."

In particular, the Catholic faith -- with its core beliefs in the resurrection of the body made possible by Christ's own death and resurrection, and in the communion of saints -- stresses that "there's a continuum from the dead who have gone before us" and future generations "who are coming in front of us," said Green.

"We're just here doing our part as the kind of union between the past and the future, and that's a big responsibility," he said.

Green stressed that "it's not good to think that we can digitally resurrect people."

"That's the completely wrong terminology," he said. "It's a mockery of the word 'resurrection,' and it shouldn't even be used."

Instead, said Green, AI can assist in creating a "digital scrapbook" of a lost loved one -- but even so, he warned, "we need to not confuse computers with people."

That task has become more challenging as large language models -- core AI models that are trained on vast amounts of data for various purposes -- are "psychologically confusing to us," said Green.

"Human beings don't meet talking artifacts; we only meet talking people," he said. "And, of course, beyond that, there's also angels and demons and God. … We've never had to deal with machines that can talk. ... Now that the object can talk back, I think we're not psychologically prepared for it."

Such avatars -- which "likely come from a good place of helping the bereaved" -- stand to "ultimately hinder the process of grief and bereavement" by generating "a lot of confusion," said Patrick Metts, a licensed professional counselor and associate director the Archdiocese of Atlanta's Office of Evangelization and Discipleship.

Metts -- who developed the "Accompanying Those Who Mourn" bereavement ministry training course endorsed by the Association of Catholic Mental Health Ministers -- told OSV News that interactions with an AI avatar of a deceased loved one "would cause this potentially persistent presence with the bereaved that's not based in reality, not based in truth."

He added that "there's great concern" such a presence would "potentially further isolate the bereaved individual" at a time when interpersonal actions and social support is particularly needed.

"The hope, of course, in a bereavement process is that they (the bereaved) are engaging with the community around them," Metts explained. "They're receiving consolation from the community around them, from the church, from the sacraments."

However, "having this avatar present with them" could undermine those bonds and "create more loneliness," he said, "because ultimately, that avatar is going to fall infinitely short of the person they lost."

Metts also drew a distinction between grieving and mourning, with the latter constituting "more of an active role in the grieving process, in which the bereaved takes steps to actively remember" the person, through for example the funeral Mass, visiting the gravesite, "writing in journals ... listening to songs that the person used to love."

"These types of active things can help bring a sense of acceptance and closure and consolation to us when we are missing the loved one," said Metts.

Both he and Green noted that modern U.S. culture increasingly seeks ways to avoid discussions of death.

"There's a lot of dysfunctionality around our conception of death in American culture or Western culture more broadly," said Green. "We want to make sure that new technologies don't contribute to that dysfunction."

And, he added, "If we can't acknowledge that people die, then we're not living in the real world anymore."

He and Metts said Catholic teaching, thought and pastoral practice can handle the challenges wrought by AI avatars of the deceased, and other forms of AI use -- particularly with Pope Leo XIV prioritizing the issue of AI.

At the parish level, faithful can offer meaningful support to those grappling with the death of a loved one, said Metts.

"Reach out and be a presence in that person's life, and fight against the tendency of society to compartmentalize and avoid it (grieving)," he said. "Actively meet the person in their grief and accompany them in their grief -- that's how the church can respond."