Griefbot – Definition & Meaning

Definition of griefbot

: an AI chatbot, synthetic voice, or digital avatar designed to imitate a person who has died by learning from that person's messages, recordings, images, and other digital traces
- The family created a griefbot from saved voice messages but limited it to stories the deceased had actually recorded.
- The service clearly labeled every response as generated so that the deadbot would not be mistaken for the person's real words.

Origin & history

first known use2016

Academic discussion of griefbots appeared by 2016, the same year a widely reported chatbot was built from the messages of a deceased friend. The names griefbot and deadbot gained broader attention after a 2024 University of Cambridge study examined generative-AI services that simulate the dead.

Test yourself

Which of these is the meaning of griefbot?

Related terms

AI companion an AI character or chatbot designed for ongoing personal conversation, friendship, or… digital twin a detailed virtual copy of a real object, building, factory, or city, kept updated with real… voice cloning using AI to copy a specific person's voice from a short recording so it can say new things generative AI AI that creates new content, such as text, images, music, video, or code, in response to a… large language model a very large neural network trained on huge amounts of text to predict the next token, which… memory a feature that lets an AI keep information about a user or task across separate conversations…

Cite this entry

"Griefbot." AI Dictionary, Dadgogo, https://dadgogo.com/dictionary/griefbot/. Accessed 4 Oct. 2026.