I wrote an essay titled Mourning On-Demand: Digital Afterlife Services and Lamentation Economics for Mid Theory Collective. In this work, we reflect and speculate on the harms of Digital Afterlife Services in the age of “AI” chatbots.
When the dead become avatars for the living they are always present, but as on-demand services rather than messy intrusions, as applications to open or close.
Thank you to my co-author Sarah Sgro for a lovely collaboration, to Martha Henzy for the invitation and all the editors at Mid-Theory for your critical feedback.