(BMJ Blog) – While deepfake technology may be promising for certain patients, it also raises significant ethical and legal questions. Deepfakes may be viewed as disturbing and are often associated with sci-fi stories. The grief counselling case is reminiscent of a particularly unsettling episode of the tv series Black Mirror, called ‘Be Right Back’, which depicts a woman trying to revive her deceased boyfriend, first as a chatbot based on his online chat history and later as a lifelike robot made of silicon. The first step is now actually possible with the use of large language models to create online personas of the dead, so-called deathbots or griefbots, which may change how people mourn. Visual deepfakes seem to be the next step into the uncanny valley. (Read More)