Written by Daniel Payne
CNA Staff December 27, 2025 / 7:00 AM
An app that claims to use AI to help recreate digital versions of deceased loved ones poses a “spiritual danger” to Catholics and others who may use the technology in place of healthy grieving, experts say.
AI company 2wai sparked controversy on social media in November after it rolled out its eponymous app that allows users to fabricate digital versions of their loved ones using video and audio footage.
Callum Worthy, the app's co-founder, said in a post on ViralX that the technology “allows us to help lost loved ones.” [to] Be part of our future. ” The accompanying video shows a family continuing to interact with the digital projections of their late mother and grandmother, years after their deaths.
Although the app's release brought praise from some technology critics, there was also considerable negative reaction. Many critics called the app “vile,” “diabolical” and “horrible,” and some predicted it would be used for cruel purposes, such as using dead relatives to promote internet advertising.
Technology 'can disrupt the grieving process'
2wai did not respond to a request for comment on the controversy, but its CEO Mason Geyser told The Independent that the ad was deliberately intended to be “controversial” to “trigger this type of online discussion”.
Geyser himself said he sees the app not as a way to have a relationship with an AI avatar, but as a tool to use with children to preserve the memories of previous generations. “I look at it as a way to … pass on some of the really good memories I have with my grandparents,” he said.
It is unclear whether such apps are compatible with Catholic understandings of death, and broader, more esoteric themes like grief. Father Michael Baggott, associate professor of bioethics at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum, acknowledged that AI avatars “could help remind us of certain aspects of our loved ones and learn from their example.”
But he said such digital replicas “fail to capture the full richness of the physical human being” and risk “distorting the legacy of the deceased” by fabricating conversations and interactions beyond the control of the deceased.
Catholic leaders have regularly referred to both the burden of grief and its redemptive power. In 2020, Pope Francis acknowledged that while grief is a “bitter road,” it can “open our eyes to the sacred and irreplaceable value of life and each person” and helps us realize “how short time is.”
Meanwhile, in October, Pope Leo
The Resurrection, he said, “does not know the discouragement and pain that trap us in the extreme difficulty of not finding meaning in our existence.”
Brett Robinson, associate director of the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame, warned of “spiritual danger” in technology that ostensibly appears to bring loved ones back from the dead.
He said technology is not a neutral product and “has a profound ability to shape our perception of reality, regardless of the content we display.”
“In cases of re-presenting deceased loved ones, we encounter cases where previous notions of identity, vitality and presence are being reshaped along technological lines,” he said.
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“If someone who has lost their human form, body, and soul can be ‘resurrected’ from an archive of digital traces of their life, then who or what are we actually engaging with?” he said.
Robinson argued that the current mode of technology has echoes of centuries ago, “when the universe was filled with beings: divine beings, angelic beings, demonic beings, magical beings.”
The problem at hand, he said, is that the “new magic” of modern technology is “separated from the hierarchical and orderly universe of creation and the spiritual realm.”
Donna McLeod has been involved in grief ministry for decades. She first became involved with Catholic grief counseling after losing her youngest daughter in 1988. The funeral service evolved into Seasons of Hope, a grief support program for Catholics that “focuses on the spiritual aspects of grieving the death of a loved one.”
Mr MacLeod said the program was one of “hospitality and spirituality” that emerges in an intensive community of people suffering from grief.
“It builds the community of the parish,” she said. “People realize they're not alone. That's a big problem for people who are grieving. Many people feel very alone with their loss.”
“And society expects everyone to move forward,” she continued. “But grief has its own schedule. Those who are grieving begin to understand that the Lord is with them and that He truly cares for them. There is hope and healing at the end of grief.”
“It’s about doing what Christ asks us to do, which is to walk with each other in difficult times,” she said.
Regarding AI avatar technology, MacLeod acknowledged that it is a “very high priority” for those who have lost a loved one to “seek a connection” with the deceased.
“People will say, 'I'm not going to take my loved one's voice off my answering machine,'” she says. “Or some bring up videos of family gatherings so they can see their loved ones again.”
“Everyone wants to stay connected to their loved ones,” she said. “It has to do with our Catholic faith and the communion of saints. People feel this spiritual connection with their loved ones.”
Mr MacLeod described himself as “on the fence” about how AI avatar apps could affect people. He acknowledged that there could be “emotional and psychological risks to interacting with an AI version of a loved one,” but said that unless there are underlying mental health issues, many users “may see it, but they won't get hooked on it.”
But “the problem arises is that some people get stuck in the denial stage,” she says. McLeod pointed out that grieving people can become desperate in such situations and sometimes turn to mediums, psychics and other resources, which the church explicitly forbids.
It is unclear whether AI avatars fall into that prohibited category. The Catechism of the Catholic Church expressly prohibits the act of “invoking the dead.” The use of mediumship and clairvoyance “hide everything”[s] It is a desire for power that transcends time, transcends history, and ultimately transcends other human beings,” Church says.
Baggot said apps like 2wai “collect data about the deceased without storing them.”
He also argued that AI avatars “could also disrupt the grieving process by sending ambiguous signals about the deceased's survival.”
Meanwhile, Robinson acknowledged that “it's good to want to connect with our departed loved ones,” noting that we do that “liturgically through prayers and memorials that honor souls that are dear to us.”
But he warned against “technocratic creators of complex computational machines that are becoming indistinguishable from magic.”
Such technology, he said, alters the “spiritual order” in ways that “religion and the ritual forms that underpin the belief that our eternal destiny lies in a God in heaven rather than in a database become disorganized and disembodied.”
Daniel Payne is a senior editor at Catholic News Service. He previously worked at College Fix and Just the News. He lives in Virginia with his family.
