Hate Being Ghosted? A New App Might Help With That.

Unfinished business can take many forms. It might involve being frustrated at an ex who ghosted you; it might be connected to a professional opportunity that evaporated for no clear reason. Whether the circumstances are personal or professional, many people have interactions that didn’t quite wind up the way they’d like. But what if there was a way to get — if not actual emotional closure, than a reasonable facsimile thereof?

That, apparently, is the thinking behind a new app called — you guessed it — Closure. In an article at 404 Media, Samantha Cole chronicled the development of this app and the wide range of services it offers users. On Closure’s website, the service offers a fairly straightforward pitch: “Chat with an AI version of a person who went no-contact with you. Get you closure.”

The company’s CEO, Anna Iokhimovich, told 404 Media that she drew upon her experience being ghosted by everyone from recruiters to her fiancé while developing the service. She also clarified that “[t]he AI persona is apologetic, empathetic and not confronting in any way, not to cause any further conflict or distress to the customer” after Cole had tested a number of scenarios with the chatbot.

Cole’s research turned up some bugs in the system, and served as a good illustration of what Closure — and similar services — can and can’t do. As she pointed out in the article, there’s precedent for this: “Roleplay can be healing, however, and trained (human) therapists use it for their clients.”

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Closure is far from the only AI-powered app to try to give its users, well, closure. Last year, CNN reported on the services that use AI to emulate users’ deceased loved ones. AI-based therapists are also gaining popularity, according to a recent NPR piece. That, too, features some big caveats — as Adi Robertson pointed out in a recent article for The Verge, talking about your mental health with a chatbot raises big privacy concerns that could expand in the coming years.