Meet the women reincarnating their loved ones for one last conversation

Jang Ji-Sung, pictured with one of her children, has been using AI to get closure after her daughter’s death (Beetz Brothers/Konrad Waldmann)

Not knowing what to say – that was the first problem. “It’s late at night,” says Christi Angel. “I was in my room. My son was asleep. The lights are not on, except for my lamp, so the hallway is dark. And I thought, OK – and I logged on.” Waiting was her first love, Cameroun. Angel missed him: she hadn’t spoken to him since he died, more than a year earlier. “But you see,” she explains, “It’s difficult. What’s the first thing you tell someone who’s dead?”

Cameroun had been reincarnated as a “griefbot”, or “deadbot” – an AI-generated version of him created using his digital footprint. Angel could now talk to her former partner.

Her story is one of many that features in a new documentary Eternal You. In the film, we also see Korean mother Jang Ji-Sung as she is “reunited” with a lifesize, digital incarnation of her dead seven-year-old daughter, and a grandmother who “makes an avatar of grandad” who can talk to the family in his AI-generated voice.