An AI Copy of Someone You've Lost

There is a voicemail on your phone that you have never deleted, and it is under a minute long. You know where the pause comes, and the breath before your name. You know the room behind the voice so well you could walk into it with your eyes shut.

Some nights you play it, and some months you can't.

For you it may be a thread of messages instead, or a few minutes of video. An app can now take those and answer back in something like their words. Whether you'd want that is about as personal as a question gets, and nobody can tell you how to grieve.

Two researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder, Jack Manning and Jed Brubaker, tested this. They let 16 people who had lost a close relative or friend try an early version of such an app.

Manning told Denver7, "We originally thought it might feel very Black Mirror creepy to people and make them uncomfortable." And then, "I ended up being completely wrong."

In his words, "a vast majority of participants said, 'I would use this in my day to day.'" A second finding sat beside that one. "Those same people also mentioned that they wouldn't recommend it for others" (Denver7, 8 July 2026).

They trusted themselves with the app and worried for everyone else, both at once. That is a comfort, and it is also a reason for care. The study is small, with one university and an early test version. It can't tell you whether talking to a copy helps or hurts over months and years, and as far as I can find, nobody knows that yet.

Michel de Montaigne's closest friend, Étienne de La Boétie, died in 1563. Later, in his essay "Of Friendship", Montaigne tried to say why he had loved him, but he couldn't give a list of reasons.

"If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I."

Many people already talk to someone who has died. They do it at a graveside, at the kitchen table, in the car or in their head. They reread letters and replay voicemails, and nobody calls that unhealthy.

A tool that helps you say what you didn't get to say can look like the next step in something people have always done. Manning called it "an incredibly meaningful experience for people".

The risk is that a copy will say things the person never said, and over time the real memory and the imitation may be hard to tell apart. Both things are true.

Two good things pull against each other here, and neither is the wrong answer.

Here is where I've landed, for myself. Let AI help you remember, but don't let a copy stand in for the person. That's my line, though yours may be different, and yours may change.

If remembering is what you want, there's a way to use AI with no copy at all. Let AI interview you over an evening, at your own pace, so the memories stay in your words.

I'd like to write down my memories of someone I've lost. Ask me one question at a time about them. Ask about what they said, what they did and the small things. Go slowly. Don't write as them or speak in their voice, and don't add anything I haven't told you. At the end, put what I've said in order, in my own words.

AI can also put old messages or letters in order and keep them somewhere safe, without carrying any of them on.

Here are some messages from someone I've lost. Help me organise them by time and by theme so I can keep them. Don't summarise what they "would" say now, and don't continue any of them.

Change either prompt as you like. Not using AI for this at all is a good answer too.

For old photographs, see Restoring the Photo in the Box.

If grief feels heavy, the people who knew them and the people who know you can offer what no tool can. So can people trained to support the bereaved. In the UK, Cruse Bereavement Support has a helpline on 0808 808 1677. Elsewhere, Find a Helpline lists services by country.

The voicemail, still saved, saying only what they said.