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Paper short abstract

Artificial intelligence enters the digital folklore world as a mediator between the living and the dead. Much like radio or television once did, it now opens virtual deathscape, where technology, memory, and narratives of liminal experiences intersect.

Paper long abstract

The term artificial intelligence has become a commonly used expression in contemporary discourse, but it is rarely given a precise definition. In everyday use, it refers to a wide range of technologies and tools, algorithms, and even social practices. This often blurs the line between technical reality and the ideas that accompany artificial intelligence. It is precisely this vagueness that allows artificial intelligence to enter the world of folklore in the digital environment.

Internet and other contemporary folklore material shows that AI appears as a liminal field through which contact is established with the spiritual world – with spirits, souls of the dead, and stories about their influence on the living.

Just as radio, television, and other technical inventions have served as media for communication with the dead in the past, AI plays a similar role today. New forms of the deathscapes are emerging in the digital environment, where natural landscapes are being replaced by virtual spaces.

A particularly interesting phenomenon in this context is the so-called AI psychosis, where intense interaction with intelligent computer systems triggers experiences in individuals that they interpret as contact with the dead or other non-human beings. These examples reveal how technology is becoming a mediator in processes where death, memory, and narratives intersect. The analysis of these narratives raises methodological questions about the study of the intertwining of the technological, social, and symbolic, and enables a new understanding of AI as a cultural phenomenon in the context of the living and the dead.