These AI digital avatars, which simulate conversations with the deceased, risk hindering grief, creating psychological confusion, and potentially violating the dignity of the dead.
Newsroom (22/08/2025, Gaudium Press ) Interactive AI recreations of deceased loved ones—so-called “AI resurrections” or “deadbots”—are raising profound ethical questions, Catholic experts told OSV News. These digital avatars, which simulate conversations with the deceased, risk hindering grief, creating psychological confusion, and potentially violating the dignity of the dead.
Advancements in AI, fueled by vast datasets, have enabled companies worldwide to develop digital avatars that allow bereaved individuals to interact with likenesses of their loved ones. Earlier this month, journalist Jim Acosta “interviewed” an AI avatar of Joaquin Oliver, a victim of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, where 17 lives were lost. Authorized by Oliver’s parents, the avatar told Acosta it was “taken from this world too soon due to gun violence” and urged action for a safer future. Last year, AI-generated voices of Oliver and other Parkland victims were used in a robocall campaign advocating for gun reform.
While such initiatives may aim to serve noble causes, they tread a delicate line, said Brian Patrick Green, director of technology ethics at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and a member of the Vatican’s AI Research Group. “There’s a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it,” Green noted. Without directly addressing the Acosta interview, he explained that while parents might see such AI use as a meaningful memorial, “the child can’t be asked their consent for it, because they’re gone.”
This lack of consent risks “the instrumentalization of a memory,” Green said, potentially violating the respect owed to the deceased. Catholic teaching, rooted in the resurrection of the body and the communion of saints, emphasizes a continuum between past and future generations. “We owe respect to the dead,” Green said, cautioning against treating AI avatars as true resurrections—a term he called a “mockery” of Christian theology. Instead, he suggested AI could create “digital scrapbooks” to honor loved ones without blurring the line between technology and humanity.
The psychological impact of these avatars is another concern. Green noted that large language models, which power these avatars, are “psychologically confusing” because humans are unaccustomed to interacting with talking machines. “We’ve never had to deal with machines that can talk,” he said. “We’re not psychologically prepared for it.”
Patrick Metts, a licensed professional counselor and associate director of the Archdiocese of Atlanta’s Office of Evangelization and Discipleship, warned that AI avatars could disrupt the grieving process. “They likely come from a good place of helping the bereaved,” said Metts, who developed the bereavement ministry training course “Accompanying Those Who Mourn.” However, such avatars could “hinder the process of grief and bereavement” by fostering a “persistent presence” that is “not based in reality.” This artificial presence risks isolating the bereaved, who need real human connection and sacramental support from their community during mourning.
Metts distinguished between grieving—a passive emotional experience—and mourning, an active process of remembering through rituals like funeral Masses or visiting gravesites. AI avatars, he said, could undermine these steps toward acceptance and closure, leaving the bereaved “infinitely short of the person they lost.”
Both experts highlighted a broader cultural avoidance of death in modern society. “There’s a lot of dysfunctionality around our conception of death in American culture,” Green said, urging that new technologies not exacerbate this issue. Metts echoed this, emphasizing the church’s role in accompanying the grieving. “Reach out and be a presence in that person’s life,” he advised, encouraging Catholics to counter society’s tendency to avoid grief.
Catholic teaching and pastoral practice, bolstered by Pope Leo XIV’s focus on AI ethics, offer a framework for navigating these challenges, the experts said. By fostering authentic human connection, the church can help the bereaved find solace without relying on digital facsimiles.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from UCAN and OSV
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