https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
""Be Right Back" is the first episode of the second series of British science fiction anthology series Black Mirror. It was written by series creator and showrunner Charlie Brooker, directed by Owen Harris, and first aired on Channel 4 on 11 February 2013.
The episode tells the story of Martha (Hayley Atwell), a young woman whose boyfriend Ash Starmer (Domhnall Gleeson) is killed in a car accident. As she mourns him, she discovers that technology now allows her to communicate with an artificial intelligence imitating Ash, and reluctantly decides to try it. "Be Right Back" had two sources of inspiration: the question of whether to delete a dead friend's phone number from one's contacts and the idea that Twitter posts could be made by software mimicking dead people.
"Be Right Back" explores the theme of grief and tells a melancholy story similar to the previous episode, "The Entire History of You". The episode received highly positive reviews, with the performances of Atwell and Gleeson receiving universal acclaim. Some hailed it as the best episode of Black Mirror, though the ending divided critics. Several real-life artificial intelligence products have been compared to the one shown in the episode, including a Luka chatbot based on the creator's dead friend and a planned Amazon Alexa feature designed to imitate dead loved ones."
Humans have a grieving process -- and digital reconstructions interfere/interact with it. Even just pictures also interfere/interact with grieving, as 1000 years ago it was not normal for most people who lost a loved one to be able to continue to see a photorealistic (if static) image of them. Is that good or bad?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
As some other comments touch on, exactly how healthy a digital reconstruction of aspects of a lost loved one is might depend on the context, the relationship, and the expectations (like the comment on it perhaps sometimes being like talking to a gravestone if the avatar is just saying a few canned phrases like "have you eaten yet?").
One thing I learned after the death of my father is that your relationship to someone can continue to change and deepen even after someone has died as you think about your interactions with them from a new perspective or continue to have your end of imaginary conversations with their memory (as you might even have had when they were alive and thinking on what you might say to them at some point). Would that process change if the reconstruction had access to things they said that you had forgotten or never even knew (like for my father, letters to relatives written in Dutch which I could not read).
Ultimately though grief is a part of life and (in the best case) eventually moving on to new experiences and new relationships informed by the past. Having people stuck in a loop talking to a computer could be isolating from the rest of the world (as "Be Right Back" implies) -- even if there might be situations (especially involving young children) where getting to know someone who is gone might be worthwhile. Although that last is also what home movies and journals used to be for.
Related tangentially is this talk by Maggie Appleton, at this point talking about social relationships and also the film "her" and how there is a fundamental difference in whether you can have an expanding social relationships with a content creator your interact with:
"The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI - Maggie Appleton"
https://youtu.be/VXkDaDDJjoA?t...
Another cautionary aspect:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett argues that supernormal stimulation governs the behavior of humans as powerfully as that of other animals. In her 2010 book, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose,[ she examines the impact of supernormal stimuli on the diversion of impulses for nurturing, sexuality, romance, territoriality, defense, and the entertainment industry's hijacking of our social instincts. In her earlier book Waistland, she explains junk food as an exaggerated stimulus to cravings for salt, sugar, and fats and television as an exaggeration of social cues of laughter, smiling faces and attention-grabbing action. Modern artifacts may activate instinctive responses which evolved prior to the modern world, where breast development was a sign of health and fertility in a prospective mate, and fat was a rare and vital nutrient."
So, technological systems -- like demons of old tales -- can keep us endlessly entranced by showing us what we want to see -- even to the detriment of the rest of our lives. Harry Potter has something about this with the "Mirror of Erised",
https://harrypotter.fandom.com...
"Author's comments: Albus Dumbledore's words of caution to Harry when discussing the Mirror of Erised express my own views. The advice to 'hold on to your dreams' is all well and good, but there comes a point when holding on to your dreams becomes unhelpful and even unhealthy. Dumbledore knows that life can pass you by while you are clinging on to a wish that can never be - or ought never to be - fulfilled. Harry's deepest yearning is for something impossible: the return of his parents. Desperately sad though it is that he has been deprived of his family, Dumbledore knows that to sit gazing on a vision of what he can never have, will only damage Harry. The mirror is bewitching and tantalising, but it does not necessarily bring happiness."
