#CFP: Death and the Chatbot: The Thanatology of Artificial Intelligence
Call for Contributors:
Death and the Chatbot: The Thanatology of Artificial Intelligence
Editors:
Robert Spinelli ([email protected]); Kaylee Alexander ([email protected]); Justina Sumilova ([email protected])
Abstract:
Deathbots, griefbots or thanabots are chatbots based on the digital footprint of the deceased that offer mourners the possibility to ‘talk’ to their loved ones after their death. This Artificial Intelligence—based thanatechnology raises several philosophical and psychological questions as well as technological ones. The rapid adoption of AI tools has coincided with a rise in AI-based resources for death mediation and grief consolation, and the questioning of mortality’s limitations fosters an emphasis on existential questions that do not have a ready precedent.
Chatbots—be they designed as bespoke, small language models or more widely available large language models (LLMs)—might reproduce or mime the language, vocal cues, or aesthetic presence of the deceased, allowing for a kind of uncanny digital afterlife. Such tools thrust death’s liminality into sharp contrast, adding stress to philosophical questions of identity and humanity. While the existence of AI-powered deathbots may seem somewhat innocuous, their simulation of those recently and long deceased presents questions of ontological disruption and existential crisis.
Approaching the intersection of death and the adoption of technologies that effectively supplant human connection with disembodied technological surrogates, this collection seeks to examine philosophical and technological issues pertaining to deathbot tech and the humanistic concerns explored in traditional death studies. We are seeking contributors from the interdisciplinary fields of thanatology, philosophy of science, media studies, digital humanities, and information sciences to explore the implications of AI and its impact on the autonomy of the bereaved and the deceased, the bereavement’s individualization, and the therapeutic potentials of AI, for better or for worse. This collection seeks to cast a wide net for topics, as the effects of AI seep their way into many fields that overlap with each other and share a collective concern for the potential subsuming of the human experience.
Suggested topics may include the following:
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(Post)humanism and human enhancement
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Technological interventions in grief therapies
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Limitrophy and AI
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Life prolongment, simulation, and artifice
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Deathbots and digital obsolescence
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Digital afterlives
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Disenfranchised grief
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Algorithmic bereavement, mourning, and grief therapies
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Meontology of AI
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Autothanatography
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Digital hauntology
Details
Please submit chapter proposals (300–500 words), CVs and brief author bios (50–80 words) to the editorial team by August 31, 2026.
The editors will review all submitted proposals and notify applicants of their status by September 15, 2026. Accepted chapters should be approximately 7,000 words (including notes and bibliography), and first drafts of completed manuscripts will be due by March 31, 2027. All chapters will be subject to the peer review process; proposal acceptance does not guarantee publication.
Expected publication in late 2027 or early 2028.