The man who turned his dead father into a chatbot

“Being able to notify a lot of people at once, remembering people through voice recordings or visual messages are all important,” he says.

But Mr Soffer believes the trend has an even more profound meaning. “When technology evolves to solve technological problems, that’s good,” he says. “But when it helps solve non-technological problems, like the grieving process, that’s the real purpose of technology.”

Yet Ms Antrobus cautions that there remains no substitute for human support when it comes to overcoming grief. “I can’t quite envisage a place for technology to take over the more traditional aspects of grieving, which are around feeling close to people, feeling cared for, feeling appreciated.”