Using artificial intelligence thanabots as "thanatobots" to assist anatomy learning and professional development: Ghosts masquerading as opportunity?

Using artificial intelligence thanabots as “thanatobots” to assist anatomy learning and professional development: Ghosts masquerading as opportunity? - PMC Skip to main content An official website of the United States government Here's how you know Here's how you know Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( Lock Locked padlock icon ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Search Log in Dashboard Publications Account settings Log out Search… Search NCBI Primary site navigation Search Logged in as: Dashboard Publications Account settings Log in Search PMC Full-Text Archive Search in PMC Journal List User Guide PERMALINK Copy As a library, NLM provides access to scientific literature. Inclusion in an NLM database does not imply endorsement of, or agreement with, the contents by NLM or the National Institutes of Health. Learn more: PMC Disclaimer | PMC Copyright Notice Anat Sci Educ . 2025 Dec 21;19(4):656–666. doi: 10.1002/ase.70174 Search in PMC Search in PubMed View in NLM Catalog Add to search Using artificial intelligence thanabots as “thanatobots” to assist anatomy learning and professional development: Ghosts masquerading as opportunity? Jon Cornwall Jon Cornwall 1 Centre for Early Learning in Medicine, Otago Medical School, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand Find articles by Jon Cornwall 1, ✉ , Sabine Hildebrandt Sabine Hildebrandt 2 Division of General Pediatrics, Department of Pediatrics, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA Find articles by Sabine Hildebrandt 2 Author information Article notes Copyright and License information 1 Centre for Early Learning in Medicine, Otago Medical School, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand 2 Division of General Pediatrics, Department of Pediatrics, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA * Correspondence , Dr. Jon Cornwall, Centre for Early Learning in Medicine, Otago Medical School, University of Otago, P. O. Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand. Email: [email protected] ✉ Corresponding author. Revised 2025 Nov 19; Received 2025 Oct 14; Accepted 2025 Nov 24; Issue date 2026 Apr. © 2025 The Author(s). Anatomical Sciences Education published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Association for Anatomy. This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. PMC Copyright notice PMCID: PMC13084473  PMID: 41423750 Abstract It has not happened yet, but it may be just around the corner: the development of thanabots, digital representations of deceased persons created by artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, and their adoption as educational adjuncts for students in anatomy education. To equip anatomy educators with information to allow them to assess this new technology, this article provides an overview of thanabot technology, together with practical and ethical considerations regarding their use in anatomy education. The new term “thanatobot” describes thanabot use in this hypothetical application. For instructive clarity, this thought experiment is limited to thanatobots trained on donors’ medical records and supported by anatomy education software. If used, potential benefits might include enhancing learning via linking medical history to anatomical findings and clinical reasoning through personalized teaching assistance. They may support professional development by facilitating humanistic engagement and illuminating donors as people rather than objects. However, their use produces significant risks, including known adverse psychological effects. Thanatabots may inadvertently reduce donors to inauthentic digital proxies, paradoxically harming humanistic engagement, and negatively impacting learning outcomes. AI errors associated with generated content may hinder accurate learning, while cultural sensitivities around engagement with the dead may be violated. Further issues include identifying appropriate operational thanatobot parameters, ethical data management, concerns around appropriate consent, and a lack of legislative oversight. Any responsible educational use of thanabots in education must carefully explore their psychological and social impacts. Ethical, cultural, and pedagogical challenges around thanatobot development should be critically examined prior to any incorporation into anatomy education. Keywords: body donor, deadbots, ethics, griefbots, humanism, medical education Thanabots—AI‐generated digital representations of deceased donors—could enhance anatomy education by linking medical history with anatomy and fostering humanistic engagement. However, their use poses ethical questions and carries psychological risks, including issues around consent, authenticity, and emotional harm. Thanabot use demands critical evaluation prior to application within educational settings. INTRODUCTION Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are reshaping education and bringing opportunities and challenges into all areas of teaching, learning, and assessment. The challenges surrounding the successful integration of such technologies are nontrivial, including within the field of anatomy where previous work has highlighted potential issues that impact their implementation. 1 , 2 , 3 This includes discussions around the use of AI where body donors are utilized, and reflections on the consequences of the replacement of the physical remains of the body donor with an AI simulated “body” in the anatomy laboratory. 1 Arguments against AI replacement of body donors also include the loss of learning opportunities in the domain of the medical humanities, such as balancing empathy with clinical detachment, or reflecting on one's own mortality. 4 Further, there are concerns around replacing the physical act of exploring three‐dimensional anatomical structures by hand, and what this may mean to learning anatomical structures. 5 However, what if AI could facilitate the humanistic aspects of student‐donor engagement, or improve the outcomes around the learning of anatomical knowledge? What if AI representations of the body donors themselves were created to engage with the students under the premise they might enhance humanistic interaction and engagement, or direct students to donor‐relevant anatomical sites of disease or injury while asking targeted questions about structure‐specific pathology? This could potentially be achieved by creating thanabots, 6 digital recreations of deceased body donors, including visual representations of the donor, trained with data from the donor's medical records and using educational software to guide interactions with the students undertaking dissection within the anatomical laboratory. Thanabots, also known as deathbots, deadbots, ghostbots, or griefbots, 7 provide a mechanism that could enable such an interaction. Thanabots are a type of chatbot trained on data of the deceased, a thano‐technology that allows a “digital resurrection” 8 and provides an impersonation of the deceased. Thanabots are commonly used to provide an opportunity for individuals to mitigate their grief following loss of a loved one by allowing interactions with the digital deceased. 9 Use of technologies to virtually resurrect the dead for various purposes is becoming more common, with dead celebrities being used to support health campaigns in the United Kingdom 10 and an Israeli campaign against domestic violence using women murdered by their spouses as virtually resurrected actors. 11 Recent controversial applications of thanabot technology in popular culture include the digital “resurrection” of late actor Suzanne Somers by her husband, 12 as an AI “twin.” Development of thanabots started in the mid‐2010s, 13 and Microsoft was granted a patent for an app that would allow users to talk with the dead in December 2020, though it is stated they have no plans to develop the idea further. 14 Other commercial tools facilitating digital resurrection include: Project December, where users can speak with the dead ( https://projectdecember.net/ ); re;memory, a site that generates personalized videos derived from photographs and audio ( https://www.aistudios.com/rememory ); and MyHeritage, a company that facilitates photographs coming to life as moving images ( https://www.myheritage.com/deep‐nostalgia ). To assist with public education, rule‐based chatbot / thanabot exhibits have been successfully developed to engage the public on the holocaust, with prerecorded content being used to respond to questions. 15 , 16 While some benefits are described to support thanabot use during bereavement, 8 , 17 the use of thanabots remains controversial 18 , 19 and the concept can be polarizing. 20 Some authors have called for a moratorium on thanabot development due to the unclear ethical, social, and legal impact surrounding their implementation. 21 As yet, no work has explored AI thanabot use in a formal educational setting and scholarly explorations of such scenarios do not yet exist. So far, academic discussions have focused on their utilization in supporting grief and bereavement processes. 8 , 17 , 22 , 23 However, the technology already exists to create AI thanabots for educational use, and future applications could hypothetically include the development of thanabots to use as an adjunct to body donor dissection in the teaching of anatomy. Here, we use the neologism “thanatobot” to define a thanabot used in anatomy healthcare education to engage with students. Use of such a hypothetical thanatobot in the anatomy laboratory could be described as complementing the use of body donors by facilitating the acquisition of anatomical and clinical knowledge while aiding professional development and enhancing the humanistic experience of the students. This article explores, as a thought experiment, the integration of a visual, verbally interactive AI thanatobot in the anatomical laboratory to enhance students' educational experiences. Many complex scenarios could be constructed regarding data used for the training of the thanatobot. These include donor interviews (including scope of interviews, range of information, how this would be made available, where it would be available, what student access would be afforded), videos, family input, family access, consenting processes, impact on professional staff, modes of donor registration, harvesting of social media, use of engagement with thanatobots outside of the DR, and how tutor‐student‐AI engagement may work. However, as additional variables are introduced, the ethical and practical arguments become more complex and the intersections between them progressively harder to disentangle. Thus, for instructive clarity, this thought experiment is limited to the hypothetical—but realistic—example of thanatobots trained on donors' medical records and further supported by anatomy education software. Provided is an overview of a scenario for a thanatobot in anatomy education, followed by a discussion of the possible educational benefits and associated disadvantages, before highlighting the risks, harms, and responsibilities associated with the implementation of such a hypothetical technological innovation. THE ANATOMY LABORATORY AS THE SETTING FOR A “THANATOBOT” INTERVENTION The use of body donors in anatomy education is beneficial for the acquisition of anatomical knowledge, 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 improvement of nontechnical discipline‐independent skills such as teamwork and communication, 28 , 29 and positively influencing professional development and professional identity formation. 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 As a contributory element of professional development, humanistic development is particularly valued. 30 , 31 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 This humanism is engendered in various forms, such as respect for the body donor, 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 incorporating reflection on mortality, and the privilege of learning from human remains. 4 , 43 , 44 It also encourages engagement with ethical issues relating to donation practices and use of donors, 2 , 41 , 45 and the development of compassion and empathy. 46 , 47 Among the current practices to humanize the engagement of students with body donors are memorial events 48 , 49 that can include donor families and loved ones, 50 , 51 providing a tangible link to the donor's lived identity. This link is further reinforced by the concept of the donor as the “first patient” and/or teacher and mentor to students. 43 , 52 , 53 Although anatomy programs often do not share personal information about donors, 54 students in a US medical school indicated a desire to have a closer relationship with donors to engender empathy and respect for the donor and future patients 52 while students in some European medical programs also wished to have more personalized information about donors. 55 In some instances, it appears students prefer to personalize the donor further, and certainly the widespread use of memorialization practices also highlights this endeavor. 56 Building on the personal linkages developed through donor family contact, the relationship between students and donors could be broadened through the use of a thanatobot, providing a novel means of extending the ‘first patient’ concept as a new form of educational engagement. Previous work 57 suggested that narratives of body donors could be incorporated into anatomy teaching activities to personalize the donor further, including recordings of donor interviews that students can access during dissections. Utilization of thanatobots could potentially be viewed as a means to reinforce the personhood of the donor while providing new opportunities for students to connect with and learn from the donor. We present a hypothetical scenario wherein the role for a thanatobot avatar is limited to its use as a teaching adjunct to assist students with dissection of a body donor. The complex role of educator‐student interactions and the substantial benefits around these interactions and engagement 58 , 59 is explicitly not explored in this simplified scenario for clarity of argument. The thanatobot in this scenario utilizes a computer‐generated facial representation based on the donor's likeness, with the underlying AI model trained on data contained within the donor's medical records, with this used in conjunction with education software to support donor‐student interactions. It is designed to verbally interact with students through a conversational interface. The thanatobot can prompt students around dissection and anatomy, whilst also guiding individual learning, and in this instance student use is restricted to the confines of the anatomy laboratory. It would be enabled to engage and answer questions about donor medical history and any potential application of this history to anatomy in real time, providing students with personalized responses throughout the dissection process. This scenario considers the impact of thanatobots on anatomical knowledge gain and professional development, two areas that are recognized as pivotal in student experiences within anatomy education and specifically during engagement with body donors. POTENTIAL EDUCATIONAL BENEFITS Anatomical knowledge Thanatobots could provide contextualized learning, identifying the level of knowledge of students and reacting with knowledge‐adapted questions. The thanatobot could therefore scaffold learning to build knowledge in an appropriate sequence to aid the student in understanding difficult pathoanatomical concepts. In doing so, the use of clinical information in the interactions could aid retention of anatomical knowledge as it could be tied to a clinical narrative which is easier for students to understand. 60 For anatomical knowledge acquisition, use of a thanatobot would add depth to the learning experience, providing personalized learning while adding clinical relevance. Thanatobots could be trained to support educational development using different strategies, such as Socratic questioning or facilitating student engagement with peers using principles aligned with social constructivism. Questions from thanatobots could be focused on structural knowledge or woven into scenarios that explore clinical skills and decision‐making, depending on the learning objectives. Nontechnical, discipline‐independent skills such as communication skills and teamwork 28 , 29 could also be guided by thanatobots who could encourage students to act through prompts and questioning. Professional development Exposure to the anatomy laboratory and body donors is known to contribute to professional development; however, engagement with body donors in the anatomy laboratory can also be a traumatic experience for some students. 61 , 62 Thanabots have been reported to create an emotional link with users 9 , 63 ; therefore, a thanatobot‐student relationship might facilitate general emotional guidance during the difficult task of dissection. 57 In this scenario, students could be guided by a personalized experience with a thanatobot that is programmed to provide guidance for students while they are making sense of a difficult emotional environment. The development of clinical objectivity balanced with empathy, an important skill for clinicians, could be aided by thanatobots providing reassurance and guidance for students struggling with dissection practices. Engaging with a thanatobot could foster reflections on death and mortality, and potential desensitization could be addressed through prompts that guide students toward appropriate responses and interactions in the anatomy laboratory. Use of thanatobots could further aid the humanization of the donor by developing the “first patient” narrative, supporting the transition from “donor as an object” to “donor as a person”, 57 and applying meaning to the interactions between the thanatobot and the student and therefore between the body donor and the student. Engagement with a visual, digital, AI proxy of the donor could reinforce the “human” aspect of the donor, engendering respect and engagement with the altruistic person whose body lies before them. This would help reinforce appropriate behaviors and attitudes to the deceased donor as well as provide coping mechanisms by showing the donor as a “real” person, and not as an object. Students could be active participants in considering ethical issues around data sharing, consent, privacy, and dignity through their engagement with the thanatobot technology, all of these concepts having strong parallels with patient ethics (Table 1 ). TABLE 1. Hypothesized impacts of thanatobot use as an educational adjunct during student engagement with body donors. Potential educational benefits Anatomical knowledge Contextualized, personalized learning Scaffolded learning Use of clinical narratives, clinical relevance, scenarios Integration of clinically focused anatomy based on donor history Facilitation of nontechnical, discipline‐independent skills Professional development Support humanization, personification of donor Assistance developing clinical detachment, desensitization General emotional guidance Development of positive attitudes toward donors Assist development of coping mechanisms regarding interaction with dead persons Potential educational disadvantages Anatomical knowledge Lack of anatomy depth if limited donor medical history or poor medical records Inaccuracy of information, AI hallucinations Reliance on AI for answers contributing to lack of learning Novelty distracts student from learning Lack of engagement through emotional perturbation Professional development Emotional perturbation, conflict, disingenuity leading to psychological trauma Confusion around boundaries about death, challenges conceptions on death/dying Impacts on future professional interaction with dead, dying persons Potential for emotional dependency, problematic reliance, unilateral bonding Misuse of donor through novelty Depersonalizes donor rather than personalizes Cultural impact; potentially an anathema to some cultures Maladaptive coping mechanisms to interactions with dead Open in a new tab Note : Description of potential benefits and disadvantages of using a thanatobot as an educational adjunct in the anatomy laboratory to assist students in their engagement with body donors and learning of anatomy. A thanatobot is a ‘thanabot’ developed specifically for use in anatomy education. In this hypothetical scenario, the thanatobot utilizes a facial representation on a computer screen generated in the likeness of the body donor and is created with their digital medical history uploaded into a database. The thanatobot can interact with students verbally to provide information and guide anatomy learning. POTENTIAL EDUCATIONAL DISADVANTAGES Anatomical knowledge If body donors have a limited medical history, this may provide a lack of depth or engagement when compared to donors with extensive history. Reliance on AI thanatobot answers may translate to superficial or poorer learning, 64 while the inaccuracy of interpretation of medical records or relevance of information may lead to issues about providing information that is relevant to learners. There is also the potential for thanatobots to be incorrect in assumptions around clinical data or clinical relevance, that is, via “hallucinations” that are still frequent in AI technology, 65 leading to disengagement by students or incorrect learning. Distraction and emotional perturbation, a consequence of engaging with the virtual representation of a dead person, may lead to a lack of engagement with anatomical material, leading to poorer anatomy learning. The novelty of interacting with a thanatobot may also distract from anatomical learning with the donor; therefore, it is not clear whether the thanatobot‐student interaction would assist or hinder anatomical learning. Professional development Engaging with body donors in the anatomy laboratory is often emotionally challenging 33 , 61 , 66 and could be made more difficult by engaging with a donor who has digitally “come to life.” The emotional disingenuity and overload of engaging with a person that is simultaneously dead—but yet not dead—may be overwhelming for students. Given AI has difficulties fostering humanity in and around personal interactions, 67 a thanatobot may make any programmed “humanistic” interactions with students either overly false, trivialized, or potentially harmful. The anatomy laboratory is known to stimulate student considerations around mortality, 4 and it is unclear how students may react to challenges around interacting with the truly dead yet “virtually alive.” There is also the concern that the training data utilized to develop the AI framework of a thanatobot may contain biases that unintentionally create discriminatory assumptions, 68 undermining humanistic engagement and professional development. Thanatobots may engender real emotions in users which could lead to confusion around what “death” signifies or means, and what being dead represents. This may manifest in suppression of emotions as students might find emotional responses difficult to authentically engage with when interacting with a donor who is “virtually alive.” This could lead to maladaptive coping or emotional responses which may flow on to their clinical practice, while there is also the possibility that students may medicalize their conceptualization of future patients based on the data‐driven engagement with a thanatobot whose engagement is primarily focused on anatomical information and provides a narrow, biased impression of a donor. This, in turn, may create unrealistic expectations around the medical knowledge or health literacy of future patients. Clinical objectivity and desensitization may become inappropriate, adversely influencing clinical behavior and professional development, and the transfer of learned expectations and behaviors to human–human interactions may also be compromised. 23 Students may also develop emotional dependency and problematic reliance on the thanatobot, similar to the friends and relatives of the deceased. 17 These parasocial relationships 6 and unilateral emotional bonding 23 may have some benefits to persons in bereavement settings, 17 however, they also have risks, and it is unclear how these may transpire in an educational context. Treating thanatobots as a novelty, or misusing them through inappropriate interaction, may have the opposite effect of humanizing donors and consequently depersonalize them, reinforcing negative norms. The body donor avatar may be perceived as comic or too “unreal,” providing an inauthentic experience and consequently leading to a lack of reverence or respect toward the dead 69 that may carry over into future healthcare practice. In addition, those students that have recently lost loved ones may be challenged further by the blurring of the boundary between death and virtual life. Virtual representations of the dead also have the potential to be an anathema to students from different cultures, many of whom may already find engaging with deceased body donors difficult, 70 , 71 which could further discourage engagement and compound existing disadvantages experienced by underrepresented groups in healthcare education. DISCUSSION: EDUCATIONAL IMPACT, PRACTICALITIES, AND RESPONSIBILITIES The burgeoning digital afterlife industry is continuing to develop commercial applications for thanodata and public interaction. 7 Some authors highlight their concerns that use of thanabots may worsen grief, 69 suggesting the use of the technology only for the purpose of commemoration to avoid dependency. 17 There are obvious concerns around the risks associated with thanabot use to mediate grief and bereavement, and to this point, the technology appears to have been exclusively considered for the bereaved. In the scenario above, the technology is explored through an educational scenario, extending the boundaries of how digital memorialization practices could intersect with educational settings. The information presented illuminates both the potential benefits and risks from an educational perspective, though there are other factors to consider. This discussion suggests that issues around the development and implementation of thanatobot technology are, to quote McStay, 63 ‘resistant to simplistic moral diagnosis.’ Thanatobots: An extreme example of AI integration into the anatomy laboratory? Having a likeness of a donor appear on a computer screen or as a three‐dimensional projection next to a donor body, ready to verbally engage with students and guide their learning, presents an interesting and perhaps disturbing scenario. However, despite the scenario being “extreme,” it is both reasonable and necessary to explore it: to reflect on the nature and objectives of current anatomy laboratory practice, to allow anatomists and all other educators to consider a potential future reality, and to consider whether potential harms outweigh any possible benefits. While educational reward may often be coupled with technological innovation, it should always be assessed critically to ensure it is fit for purpose and appropriate. 2 , 72 Anatomical knowledge, professional development, and quasihumanistic interaction Studies have indicated that AI patient actors are perceived by students as acceptable educational adjuncts in clinical training, 73 so why not extend the application to include AI thanatobots in the anatomy laboratory? At face value, there are potential rationales that thanatobots can benefit student acquisition of anatomical knowledge, and these are similar to those offered around other educational technologies and AI use. For example, the use of AI thanatobots to guide scaffolded learning 74 , 75 , 76 could potentially enhance the acquisition of anatomical and clinical knowledge. To humanize the interaction between students and donors further, some authors have proposed using recorded videos and images of donors, 57 while there have also been suggestions about increasing humanism where AI seems to be taking it away. 67 The scenario presented here provides a unique opportunity to develop an interactive platform that takes the idea of “visual” engagement one step further, using AI to increase humanism in the anatomy laboratory by providing a virtual “first patient” who visually and verbally engages with the student. This humanistic element supports a more realistic student‐AI engagement, given that previous explorations of AI chatbot interactions have typically relied on computer‐generated simulations, whereas the present scenario employs the likeness of the actual donor as the visual interface with users. However, there are considerable concerns and risks in using thanatobots to deliver such an intervention, regardless of any perceived educational benefits, and these should be explored prior to implementing such novel technologies. It should also be noted that almost all of the educational and professional advantages associated with the use of thanatobots can be achieved by well‐trained faculty and staff, persons who can engage students to achieve the same outcomes while developing interpersonal communication skills and other levels of professional development. 41 , 46 The implementation of thanatobots also presents an epistemological challenge regarding the construction of knowledge around “humanism” in anatomy. Presently, humanism in anatomical practice is grounded in respect for the physically present donor, 77 ensuring engagement is underpinned by treating donors with dignity, 41 and reflection on humanistic elements such as mortality. 4 While thanatobot technologies may add a “new dimension” to humanism through student engagement with digital representations of the dead, there is a possibility that “humanism” in anatomy is redefined to become more aligned with engagement with a digital artifact rather than the physical reality of another human being, albeit a dead one. This raises questions around how “authentic” humanistic interaction should manifest with regard to digital personhood and the impact of such uses in anatomy. Humanism for students, but at what cost? The practice of framing body donors in the anatomy laboratory as the “first patient” for students is not uncommon, 43 , 53 , 55 , 78 and humanizing the donors is viewed positively. A thanatobot would attempt further humanization by providing an interactive avatar in the likeness of the donor that engages with students. But is this really humanizing the donor, or is it “humanism by virtual AI proxy”? A thanatobot avatar may have features that look like a donor, but it lacks authenticity and human purpose. While not providing “emotional relief” similar to its use with bereavement, 79 it still has the potential to generate emotions in interactions with end users 63 especially in an environment that can be emotionally challenging. At best, such interactions are quasihumanistic given any emotional interaction is ultimately one‐sided and the student is reduced to a service interactant 7 rather than being one half of a meaningful human relationship. This lack of authenticity means that any student‐thanatobot interaction is not truly “humanizing” the donor or providing real opportunities to undertake humanistic considerations. This is in addition to the concern that this technology could diminish human interaction with teaching faculty, compounding issues around how students may learn human to human interactions. 67 Certainly, providing further opportunities for students to engage with a donor's history, family, or life provides a platform for students to undertake humanistic engagement 39 , 41 –however, it is not clear that engaging with a digital proxy thanatobot would provide a similar outcome. It could be argued that a thanatobot could provide emotional assistance to students during an already uneasy encounter, 33 , 71 however, this interaction may in reality be something far more difficult to negotiate. Working with the deceased leads many students to ask questions around mortality. 4 How would having a “virtually alive” deceased donor influence these questions on mortality? Would it alter the student relationship with, and understanding of, mortality? The nature of being dead, and any potential shift around what it means to be dead, may not be healthy for healthcare professionals who deal with life and death throughout their careers. There are benefits to thanabot use during mourning or bereavement; however, at present these primarily appear to be in mitigating emotional responses. 9 , 17 , 79 , 80 , 81 These investigations on thanabot use also carry warnings: the majority of publications highlight the potential risks and the vast amount that remains “unknown” around the impact of these technologies on both individuals and society. Use of thanabots during bereavement can create unnecessary dependence, 17 while for some it may make grief worse. 69 How this would translate to an educational setting is unclear, especially when emotions generated by interactions with thanabots can have real implications for users, 6 and there is the potential for this emotional interaction to be further perturbed with the emotions students feel when engaging with a dead person for the first time. 33 Further, it remains unknown how the use of thanabots may alter the nature of the student engagement 6 with body donors. Thanabots create emotions and influence a person's feelings, 63 with there being real potential to engender emotional dissonance or an ambivalence of emotions. 63 This may have negative ramifications for student engagement inside the anatomy laboratory. While emotional engagement of students with body donors may be positive, such as inducing empathy and humanizing the student‐donor interaction, there is a potential risk that “artificial” engagement with a “virtual” body donor has the opposite effect. 72 If a student becomes more emotionally ambivalent because this interaction is not authentic, there is a risk that the desired outcome of humanizing the donor is not met, or worse, the body donor becomes more dehumanized. Careful examination is therefore required to determine whether thanatobot interactions might provide beneficial or adverse outcomes in humanizing the donor. This includes determining the emotional response to any donor avatar likeness. It remains unclear whether it would be beneficial or harmful if the avatar is modeled on the donor themselves, and how this would influence anatomy learning objectives or potential “humanistic” objectives. It is necessary to clarify whether a “more real” virtual AI proxy of the donor facilitated or hindered the learning outcomes prior to implementation of such novel technologies. Ethical considerations and legal frameworks The application of thanatobot technologies in an educational space would require the development of processes and guidelines to ensure appropriate governance of the information and technology to ensure issues for stakeholders and communities of care were addressed. 82 These issues include the perspectives of donor families to such technologies being used, developing new types of consent for donors and their families. 83 , 84 Currently, first‐person informed consent is recommended for body donation practice, 77 and there are often temporal limits on the use of human remains. Detailed explanations around the application of new AI technologies would have to be developed to ensure donors were appropriately informed, and consent scope would need to be broadened to include family members who might wish to engage with an AI representation of a deceased loved one, should they find out one existed. Additionally, the scope of use and new applications of the thanatobot, such as the potential for public engagement, would need to be considered in consent frameworks. There would also need to be agreement on the novel and lawful use of medical records, 85 , 86 the use of donor images as avatars, 87 and the ethical management of digital data (i.e., acquisition, use, storage, distribution, and destruction of data). 88 Discussions should also include defining legal and ethical responsibilities around the development of data sets used for training AI platforms. 89 Defining the operational parameters of thanatobot use has consequences that will influence the ethics and governance of such resources. For instance, what does the use of donor information for thanatobot applications in educational settings mean in a practical, ethical, or legal sense? How would one “retire” (destroy, delete, or erase) data appropriately? 7 Would avatars be present at donor commemoration services that included families, 56 and what consequences would there be if families asked to engage with the thanatobot of their loved one? Who has “ownership” over thanatobot use if the estate of the donor has rights over the use of donor medical information? The list of operational and ethical questions is long and highlights the multitude of issues faced in turning the idea into reality. Because thanabots have only recently become visible within society, there is a distinct lack of ethical and legal guidance in this space, though authors have contributed suggestions around thanabot oversight. Lindemann 23 recommends that for the purposes of treating grief, thanabots should be classified as medical devices, while Öhman and Floridi 88 , 90 suggest digital remains should be treated like archeological remains, drawing parallels with Alves‐Cardoso and Campanacho 91 on public perceptions of how 3D printed human remains should be treated—like actual human remains. Öhman and Floridi 88 further suggest treating digital remains with dignity that aligns with the International Council of Museums’ Code of Professional Ethics 92 definition of “human dignity.” They also suggest that digital remains should not be used as a means to an end or for profit. 88 Both the application of “dignity” and avoidance of commercialization align with principles put forward within recommendations for legacy anatomical collections. 82 , 87 “Dignity” is also outlined in the General Data Protection Regulations of the European Union, 93 though it is not framed as a central tenet of the legislation, highlighting the absence of legal frameworks that provide specific guidance regarding thanabots. Legal protections or lack thereof for users in the “thanabot” space have also been illuminated, 63 , 81 and this remains problematic. 94 Supporting the idea of legal protection of digital data arising from the deceased, Harbinja 95 has put forward suggestions around the concept of postmortem privacy, emphasizing the impact of digital remains on the living and outlining a rationale for managing these data legally. In a practical sense, it remains unclear what “thanatosensitivity” 96 the digital data of the deceased are afforded to guide the establishment of laws and regulations in this area. Clearly, defining the dignity of the deceased 17 , 97 in a digital age is both necessary and problematic, including accurately defining why and how thanabots are a digital intrusion on the dignity of the deceased. 23 Such definitions are necessary to support arguments around legislative change. Further refinement of legislation is required to ensure end users are adequately protected from harm. This includes any potential educational applications of the technology, suggesting that discussion around thanatobot use in anatomy education demands well‐defined legal and ethical boundaries to respect both the dignity of the deceased and the welfare of students. On the nature of being dead Use of thanatobot technologies presents a modern challenge to a historic anatomy epistemological method, one that is underpinned by anatomical knowledge being learned through engagement with the physical body. This epistemology has already been challenged in recent decades by the integration of digital technologies 98 , 99 , 100 , 101 , 102 including the Anatomage table, 103 augmented reality applications, 104 and virtual reality anatomy programs. 105 The development of thanatobots would extend this challenge. The feeling of unease which can accompany exploration of thanabot technologies highlights the fact that serious considerations around thanatobot development are necessary and these extend beyond educational outcomes. While understanding potential educational outcomes is important for any novel application adopted into teaching practice, the nature of thanatobot interaction goes beyond educational objectives to a fundamental ontology common to human existence—namely, what it means to be dead. If thanatobot technology is developed and used in anatomy, there is perhaps an accompanying obligation to consider its influence on a fundamental ontology common to all humans: that is, how “being dead” is represented within society. Anatomists should not avoid engaging with this topic—the anatomy profession has helped shape how the dead are viewed in society for centuries, 100 , 106 and the subject has recently demanded re‐examination with the development of plastination and the subsequent “Body Worlds” exhibitions. 107 , 108 Thanatobots present a similar challenge requiring different considerations by anatomists to determine what “being dead” means, and how this influences the way the profession engages with the public. 109 This is perhaps not an issue to be immediately solved, but it is necessary for the profession to consider. How anatomists should align with cultural and societal beliefs around the use of the dead within anatomy education is important to ensure the discipline of anatomy retains social license 85 around using the dead, and that such use does not adversely impact societies’ perspectives around how the dead should be treated. Finally, it is crucial to reflect on the “unknown” impact of thanatobot implementation in an educational context to promote this article as a cautionary exploration and warning. While there is often promise of educational benefit and positive learning outcomes when new technologies are developed, implementation of the kind described here would not come without multiple risks. Despite the ethics and governance issues that may hinder the implementation of a thanatobot in practice, many of these “issues” do not prevent the technology from being delivered in a practical sense in the immediate future. Indeed, it may be that technology developers see addressing these issues as future concerns and not as integral to the actual use of the technology, and anatomists should be ready to carefully scrutinize any products that are developed in this “AI” space. CONCLUSION Thanabot technology is becoming more prominent and accessible. Once the sole domain of the imagination and science fiction, technologies currently exist to allow interaction with the virtual dead in a chatbot form. Here, a hypothetical scenario is provided around the use of thanabots, in the form of “thanatobots,” to engage with students during the teaching of anatomy with body donors. It frames a scenario where a thanatobot is utilized to facilitate learning and engagement with donors in the anatomy laboratory, highlighting perceived positive educational aspects such as improving outcomes in anatomical and clinical knowledge while also facilitating humanistic experiences of student engagement with body donors. However, there are many potential risks and harms associated with this technology. These include the unknown emotional impact on users and whether this may benefit or harm future engagement of students with their patients, or their understanding of dying and death. Therefore, caution is strongly encouraged in developing such technologies for educational use to ensure harm does not result. Other factors include the array of ethical and governance issues that accompany any use of these technologies in an educational setting, including a lack of regulatory oversight. This article seeks to remind anatomists that the development of any technological innovation in anatomy needs to be balanced with the responsibility that accompanies influencing a foundational ontology shared by all humans: what it means to be “dead,” and how technologies that influence such distinctions may impact the living. The consequences of ignoring such obligations are nontrivial given the unknown psychological, cultural, and social impact of these technologies, in addition to their influence on learning efficacy and outcomes. AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS Jon Cornwall: Conceptualization; writing – original draft; writing – review and editing. Sabine Hildebrandt: Writing – review and editing. CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT Sabine Hildebrandt and Jon Cornwall are members of the Federative International Committee for Ethics and Medical Humanities (FICEM), the ethics committee of the International Federation of Associations of Anatomists. Jon Cornwall is the Chair of FICEM. Sabine Hildebrandt is a member of the Human Remains in Harvard Museum Collections Research Review Committee. She receives royalties from her book “ The Anatomy of Murder .” ACKNOWLEDGMENTS By emphasizing the importance of the human body donor for healthcare education, we gratefully acknowledge the altruistic individuals who donated their bodies for research and education. Without them, we would be unable to provide the meaningful experience in the dissection room that teaches students more than just the technical skills of anatomy. The authors would also like to thank Tom Champney for his thoughtful comments on drafts of this manuscript. Biographies Jon Cornwall , Ph.D., is currently Education Adviser in the Centre for Early Learning in Medicine at the Otago Medical School, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. He is interested in body donation and the use of human tissues in education, research, and healthcare, and is one of three academics guiding the “Bioethics Unicorns” initiative that seeks to promote ethics and professionalism in anatomy. Jon is Chair of the Federative International Committee for Ethics in the Medical Humanities (FICEM) for the International Federation of Associations of Anatomists (IFAA). Sabine Hildebrandt , M.D., FAAA, is an associate professor of pediatrics in the Division of General Pediatrics, Department of Pediatrics at Boston Children's Hospital and lecturer on global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. 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