Overview
AI-powered tools can now simulate a deceased person's voice, recreate their writing style and generate conversations that feel startlingly real. For grieving clients, these technologies offer both comfort and complexity and practitioners need new frameworks to respond effectively.
This webinar will give you practical, evidence-informed tools for navigating AI in bereavement care. You'll gain clear definitions of deathbots and posthumous avatars, clinical insight into why bereaved individuals find AI connections meaningful, frameworks for assessing emotional and ethical risks and actionable principles for responsible practice across therapeutic settings.
Whether your clients are already experimenting with deathbots or you want to prepare for conversations ahead, you'll leave equipped with grounded strategies that honour both innovation and clinical responsibility.
Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of this webinar, participants will be able to:
- understand how relationships with the dead have evolved from ancient burial practices to today's "digital dead," and distinguish between key technologies such as legacy data, memorial platforms and AI deathbots and how each influences mourning, memory and continuing bonds.
- recognise why bereaved clients seek AI contact with deceased loved ones, drawing on grief theory (meaning-making, continuing bonds) and cultural, spiritual and individual variations
- assess the benefits and risks of AI grief tools, including consent violations, privacy concerns, family conflict, emotional dependency, misinformation and exploitation vulnerabilities
- apply practice-ready frameworks for responding ethically and effectively: assessment questions, professional boundaries, documentation standards, safeguarding triggers and supervision or referral pathways
Presenter Bio
Christopher Hall
AM, JP, MA, GradDipAdol&ChPsych, BEd, CertIVTAE, MAPS, GAICD, FIWGddb
For the past 29 years Christopher Hall has held the position of Director and Chief Executive Officer of Grief Australia. He is a psychologist specialising in grief and bereavement. Christopher was elected President of the Association for Death Education and Counselling in 2015. In 2007, he was elected to the Board of Directors of the International Work Group on Dying, Death and Bereavement and served as chair from 2010-2013 and as the Secretary/Treasurer since 2010. The Association for Death Education and Counselling in 2018 awarded him the ADEC Service Award for his commitment to the field and advancing the study of dying, death and bereavement.
Christopher is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, a Fellow of the International Work Group on Death, Dying and Bereavement, an Honorary Fellow of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Melbourne and an Industry Fellow of the Faculty of Education at Monash University. He serves as the Editor of the journal Grief Matters: The Australian Journal of Grief and Bereavement and is a former Associate Editor of Death Studies. Since 2010, Christopher has been a member of the Coronial Council of Victoria. In the 2024 King’s Birthday Honours Christopher was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia, (AM) for significant service to psychology, particularly to grief and bereavement.
Important Information
All webinar registrants will receive a link to the recording in the week following the event. Those who haven’t registered can also purchase the recorded webinar through our website.
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