Eternime or Simulating the Dead Using “Smart” Chatbots: Semiotic Reflections on Imaginary Media
This paper focuses on the Eternime technology project (2014-2020), which proposed to simulate the dead through “smart” chatbots. Using semiotics, intermediality and media archaeology, this article considers Eternime as an “imaginary media.” With no existence outside the inventor’s laboratory, Eternime presents itself through a set of verbal and visual signs and speeches. Starting with this idea, our approach is articulated in two phases. First, the rhetorical themes in Eternime’s discourses are identified (synchronic perspective). Second, it presents heuristic considerations about some technical trajectories taken by the technology (diachronic perspective). This article pursues two objectives in particular: to situate Eternime in the technomedia sphere and to problematize the unprecedented aspect of such a project.