Can deathbots facilitate ambiguity closure for bereaved people?

Bereavement can cause grief, as well as a sense of ‘unfinished business’: for these feelings to end, individuals require closure. Closure can involve an end to troubling emotions (herein called “distress closure”), or by obtaining answers to lingering questions and expressing sentiments which were not expressed in life (herein called “ambiguity closure”). This paper examines whether deathbots — chatbots imitating the deceased — could provide ambiguity closure. The paper argues that deathbots can offer catharsis to bereaved individuals, just as letter-writing or imagined conversations can. However, deathbots may not always be apt to provide answers to factual questions about the deceased’s life. Deathbots can offer partial ambiguity closure to at least some individuals, but they are not without risk: they could sometimes create ambiguity by giving inconsistent or confusing answers, making ambiguity closure more difficult, or they could facilitate excessive rumination or dependence by users, increasing users’ ambiguity by never ending conversations with users.