Turning to griefbots or grieving with hope?

Two of the most atypical Marvel/Disney+ series of the past couple of years have been two of the most interesting.

Instead of action men, explosions, robots and galactic threats, they featured intelligent storytelling combined with a quirky central concept, and a female showrunner and predominantly female casts. They were both, unusually for big budget productions, also about grief. Wandavision (2021) gave us the poignant line: ‘What is grief, if not love persevering?’, and in Agatha All Along (2024) the burden of grief carried by the charismatic villainess helped to humanise her.

All that lives must die

February also marks the start of the run of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new production of Hamlet – perhaps one of literature’s most famous portrayals of grief. The protagonist is defined by his iconic black mourning suit as he persists in grieving his father’s death. For this Danish prince, grief goes beyond the external: ‘I have that within which passes show/these but the trappings and the suits of woe.’

Sadly, grief and loss are part of our fallen world, and poets, playwrights and Hollywood producers have found these emotions to be fertile soil for creative explorations of something we all experience. Perhaps less healthily, technology is now seeking to ‘help’ people with these feelings of grief.

At the end of last year, the BBC aired a couple of documentaries on TV and radio which considered the flourishing industry around AI ‘griefbots’. Unlike a photograph or video of the deceased, these AI-powered chatbots provide the bereaved with the opportunity to talk to their ‘loved one’, even training the griefbot to emulate the sound of their voice.

One inventor of such a griefbot says that it helped him find closure after losing his fiancé, and proponents of this technology suggest that griefbots could be used as a tool to help grievers adapt to life after loss. However, even these advocates admit that unscrupulous tech companies could very easily exploit users when they are at their most vulnerable. Academics studying the phenomena have cautioned against their use by children, or those with learning difficulties, who would not be able to distinguish between reality and AI-generated conversations.

Grief with hope

Grief is an inescapable part of this fallen world, but we need to remember that death and loss was not part of God’s original design. So, what might a Christian response to grief and griefbots look like? There is much the Bible has to say on this topic but perhaps this is a start.

1 Thessalonians 4:13 tells us not to be uninformed about the glorious news of the gospel. Paul instructs them: ‘Do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.’ Notice they are not told to stop grieving but, rather, not to do so like those who have no hope. We can grieve with a sure and certain hope that death is not the end. Perhaps if griefbots catch on more widely, the Christian way of grieving with hope would be not to use them?

Much as we might yearn to speak to those whom we have lost for a time, we cannot. Yet there are those who have had that wonderful experience: if we look to the accounts of Christ’s resurrection, we can relive the joy of those first disciples in the Upper Room or on the road to Emmaus or by the Sea of Galilee. Jesus has returned from the dead and spoken to His friends, and still does today. As 1 Corinthians 15:22-23 reminds us, ‘For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him.’ Grief is raw, painful and inevitable, but Jesus is the resurrection and the life.