IRL Tragedy, AI Comfort: Bereavement, Griefbots, and the Ethics of Thanatechnology in Dante Medema’s Message Not Found

Abstract The impact of generative AI on the lives of young people has been the subject of extensive discussion, and most of it has been negative. Dante Medema’s young adult novel Message Not Found does not join the existing chorus of voices lamenting, fearing, and denouncing AI; rather, it offers a compelling portrait of how this new technology can be a resource, asset, and even lifeline for young adults. Message Not Found follows Bailey Pierce, a high school senior in rural Alaska who, after her best friend Vanessa dies in a car accident, creates an AI chatbot to mimic her. The digital avatar is the source of comfort and companionship for the bereft narrator-protagonist. At the same time, it is also a vehicle for growth and insight. Bailey’s exchanges with the griefbot include unsettling conversations, shocking realizations, and even terrible truths. By the end of the novel, Bailey’s negative experiences with AI technology prove to be as valuable as the positive ones, and perhaps more so. In so doing, Message Not Found offers a more nuanced, complicated, and measured view of machine learning—and, ironically, of what it means to be human.