Marking time: griefbots, world-time, and the phenomenology of bereavement

Bereavement has long been recognised as an experience of profound temporal disruption, unravelling and even severing the connections, meanings, and strategies we habitually use in navigating time. The technologies that are involved in our grieving and mourning processes can therefore also be temporal technologies; our encounters with them can both shape and be shaped by our entanglement in the temporalities of loss. The recent phenomenon of so-called ‘griefbots’ or ‘deathbots’ – Large Language Model-powered chatbots trained to imitate the dead – is no different. This paper explores some of the implications that interactions with such bots might have for a bereaved person’s experience of time by turning to Heidegger’s conceptualisation of world-time. This framework is particularly useful for thinking about both intimacy and loss, and can shed light on both beneficial and deleterious consequences of griefbot usage. In particular, such an approach can show that the dangers of griefbots usage lie less in the potential for the bereaved being deceived, and more in the reductive perspective that these bots can encourage. Usage of, and even temporary reliance upon, a griefbot can generate attitudes with a protective effect, similar to the function that Lisa Bortolotti ascribes to delusions. However, griefbots can also interfere with the temporal unfolding of grief and mourning by disrupting the way that loss tends to transform our embedding within the dynamics of world-time.