It now is possible to use technology to raise the dead. We haven't cracked the code on how to live forever, or discovered how to bring someone back to biological life. Instead, it has become much easier and more common to "resurrect" the dead by creating lifelike artificial intelligence (AI) avatars of them. Thanks to advancements in generative AI, artificial intelligence that can generate language, imagery, and audio (among other media), users are now able to speak with "ghostbots" that mimic people who have passed away. Think of it as ChatGPT for the dearly departed.

Last month, in collaboration with the folks behind the fantastic Burner app, my company Voxable launched our latest chatbot project, Ghostbot for Burner. Ghostbot runs on top of Burner's "open" phone numbers as an agent inside your text message inbox, allowing you to "ghost" away from fleeting relationships by responding to unwanted or creepy texters on your behalf. Since the launch, Ghostbot has been covered in over one hundred media outlets. Chris Messina was also kind enough to post it to Product Hunt, calling it "the first bot-as-personal-firewall" he had seen. The opportunity to break new ground in the coming era of bot-mediated communication was what initially both excited and terrified us about the project.

Rejecting unwanted suitors over text is an awkward challenge for a generation of online daters. Ghostbot will detect incoming texts from the person you've chosen to "ghost" – a modern (and cowardly) dating trend that involves ceasing all communication with an unwanted suitor – and send automated responses, lacking in warmth of enthusiasm, until the other person takes the hint. For example, if the other person pushes for a date, Ghostbot might reply: "Nope," "I just have no time right now," or "Sorry, just me and [pizza emoji] tonight." This continues until the pestering messages peter out. "We hear a lot of anecdotes about terrible texting from dating matches, but sometimes blocking someone creates an awkward social circumstance. Ghostbot helps you go through the motion of ghosting someone without negative consequences," said Will Carter, co-founder of Ad Hoc Labs, which makes Ghostbot.

If you are a member of the dating public, you have likely ended your romance with someone--or been slowly snubbed--by a drawn-out, awkward string of text messages and silence. For the uninitiated, this practice of smothering a personal relationship to death by withdrawing from communication is known as ghosting, and there's now a pretty mean chatbot who will do this for you. Users can access the bot through Burner, an app that specializes in providing people with temporary or secondary phone numbers that are used by consumers ranging from online daters who want privacy to charter boat captains who want to separate their personal and business lives on their cell. The company collaborated with screenwriter Peter Miriani and bot-makers Voxable to launch the feature. Though the bot will usually wait anywhere from several minutes to several hours before responding with a ghosting text, for testing purposes the bot was set to go back-and-forth in real time.