Memorybot: AI and the End of Human Memory - Hardcover

Hoskins, Andrew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1509573739 ISBN 13: 9781509573738

Publisher: Polity, 2026

Synopsis

From a murdered teenager being interviewed as though he were alive to a widow speaking with a chatbot made through cloning the digital relics of her late husband, AI-generated versions of the deceased are becoming uncanny yet convincing in their human-like form. Are personal memories, so central to our sense of self, lost to a future where we feel compelled to embrace he human-like comfort of bots? Are the most traumatic and joyous parts of human existence forever subject to AI's manipulation of memories?

Memorybot explores the consequences of generative AI for the nature and survival of human memory. Hoskins argues that we are witnessing the emergence of a new societal paradigm, a battle between humans and machines in AI's shaping of reality, its erosion of anonymity and in making human forgetting impossible. As the book reveals, AI technologies are producing a new kind of memory, reflecting a past that never existed.

Written by a leading international scholar of memory studies, Memorybot is a haunting read for anyone concerned about the growing influence of AI technologies on personal and public lives, and for the fields of media, psychology, sociology, history and memory studies.

About this title

About the Author

Andrew Hoskins is Professor of AI, Memory and War at the University of Edinburgh.

Edition details

• Publisher: Polity
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1509573739
• ISBN 13: 9781509573738
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 144