Digital Shadows: Exploring the Other and the I in Communication with Thanabots

Abstract

The development of large language models (LLMs) has led to the proliferation of chatbot services like ChatGPT, Replika and Project December further contributing to technologically mediated grief. Called variously griefbots, or thanabots, the postulated aim behind these technologies is to help people deal with the loss of their loved ones. Despite hype around these technologies in the media, little is still known about the actual mechanisms of how thanabots contribute to grieving. This paper contributes to answering this question by offering an interpretation of communication with thanabots through the prism of Yuri Lotman’s autocommunication model. We start by examining how a thanabot can be framed as a communicational ‘other’. Then we draw on phenomenology of grief literature to delineate the boundaries of such “otherness”. In line with the Lotman’s autocommunication model, we proceed to argue that conversing with a thanabot can be viewed as an instance of ‘I–I’ communication. Within this model, the bot functions as a secondary code that allows for new meaning to arise in the process of communication and, consequently, for a bereaved person to renegotiate their new identity in the face of loss.