In our rush to make the impossible possible, though, I wonder whether we have properly considered the implications, both ethical and emotional, on the people we’ve lost and on those left behind. What are the moral or legal implications of simulating the dead? Can grief bots really help people grieve or is there, ultimately, no replacing human connection? And how does it feel to talk to someone you have lost, someone you thought you’d never speak to again?

I decided to find out, using Project December to ‘reconnect’ with my dad. According to its creator, Jason Rohrer, the technology wasn’t designed specifically to facilitate conversations with the dead. Initially, Project December – which uses a text-completion engine, meaning it can generate text in any style and from any point of view – had built-in personalities that users could talk to. But it also allowed them to create their own – and they did. “One of these users tried to simulate a conversation with his dead fiance, and it worked,” Rohrer tells Stylist. “After his story went public a year later, thousands of other people tried to use Project December in the same way, to simulate their dead loved ones for a kind of self-prescribed grief therapy.”

When it came to it, the process of setting up my grief bot was simpler than expected, especially considering the enormity of what it was about to do. I had to fill out a form, submitting information about my father – hobbies, favourite foods, the TV shows he liked to watch, his family members – and then wait for his ‘personality’ to go live. Inputting data about him into a system, a technology about which he had no knowledge, was a curious and not entirely pleasant feeling. But I was propelled by a giddy, ghoulish excitement at the prospect of talking to him again. Even though I knew whoever – or whatever – I would talk to would be nothing but a shadow, an impression, a mock-up of the man I knew and loved.

“I resurrected my dad using AI and this is what I learned”