In 2025, chatbots are part of our everyday life. They pop up on your screen while you’re checking your bank account or making an online purchase.  

But a few years from now, it may be just as easy to have a conversation with a chatbot who recreates a dead loved one.  That’s the idea behind a kind of technology called a generative ghost. 

Jed Brubaker is an associate professor in the Department of Information Science at the University of Colorado Boulder, and one of the people leading the development of generative ghosts. Jed is part of a team that recently received $75,000 from Google to study how generative ghosts could become part of our lives.  

In the NoCo’s Brad Turner spoke with Jed in November about what a visit with the generative ghost of a dead loved one would feel like. We’re listening back to that conversation today. 

Jed also leads the Digital Legacy Clinic – a free clinic at CU to help people who want to get a deceased loved one’s digital affairs in order. We spoke with him about it earlier this year.

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Host and Producer: Erin O'Toole
Producer: Ariel Lavery
Executive Producer: Brad Turner
 
Theme music by Robbie Reverb
Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions
In The NoCo is a production of KUNC News and Community Radio for Northern Colorado.