(The New Yorker) – You can now make a virtual replica of a loved one. The question is what it can give you in return.

Gaia Alari, a thirty-six-year-old artist, lives in Bergamo, Italy. In the past few years, her father, Gabriele, a seventy-seven-year-old doctor, has grown frail with age. Faced with her father’s mortality, Gaia started searching for a way to make losing him less painful.

Then Gaia learned about the booming digital-afterlife industry, which is worth billions of dollars. One of its offerings is called a death bot: an interactive replica of a loved one, created by feeding an A.I. memories, photos, and other information. The cost is akin to that of a Netflix subscription. The promise is that you never have to say goodbye.

The following is based on several months of interviews with Gaia and her father, along with transcripts from their chats with the death bot they created. The conversations have been edited for length and clarity. (Read More)