Conversational AIs and Mnemonic Distortion

Conversational AI agents designed to simulate interactions with deceased persons—referred to here as Interactive Personality Constructs of the Dead (IPCDs)—offer a novel and potentially highly valuable way to memorialise the deceased. But IPCDs could also undermine the goal of remembrance. This paper argues that IPCDs put users at risk of mnemonic distortion— an epistemic harm in which generated misrepresentations of the deceased become incorporated into our memory of the deceased, such that some of what subsequently shapes our conception of the deceased person originates in the IPCD rather than the deceased—reshaping or, at worst, replacing our memories of the person we hoped to remember. Such distortions are importantly distinct from imaginative engagement with the deceased or the testimony of others, which may also alter our memories of the deceased. The risk of mnemonic distortion is not inherent to IPCDs but rather contingent on design; the paper concludes by considering how this concern could inform recommendations for the design of IPCDs.