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Digital resurrection: fascination and fear over the rise of the deathbot

Digital resurrection: fascination and fear over the rise of the deathbot

Theos report ‘AI and the Afterlife’ was quoted in The Guardian. 10/08/2025

Harriet Sherwood references Theos report AI and the Afterlife in Sunday Read for the Guardian.

There is also a risk of creating a dependency in the living person, said Nathan Mladin, the author of AI and the Afterlife, a Theos report published last year. “Digital necromancy is a deceptive experience. You think you’re talking to a person when you’re actually talking to a machine. Bereaved people can become dependent on a bot, rather than accepting and healing.”

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Nathan Mladin

Nathan Mladin

Nathan joined Theos in 2016. He holds a PhD in Systematic Theology from Queen’s University Belfast and is the author of several publications, including the Theos reports Data and Dignity: Why Privacy Matters in the Digital Age, Religious London: Faith in a Global City (with Paul Bickley), and ‘Forgive Us Our Debts’: lending and borrowing as if relationships matter (with Barbara Ridpath).

Watch, listen to or read more from Nathan Mladin

Posted 10 August 2025

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