Synopsis
Long before AI and ChatGPT became daily front page news, Joshua Barbeau began using it for a very different reason. He had lost his fiancé, Jessica, and found himself grief-stricken, unable to move on. When someone told him about a back door into an extraordinary new technology that would allow him to build a 'character' to communicate with, he fed it a description of her and a paragraph-long mash-up of her text messages, and was soon conversing with someone, something, that felt just like her.
When we think, talk, and write about AI, it tends to be in economic and existential ways. Will it take away our jobs? Will it ultimately grow too smart and destroy us? In The Jessica Simulation, journalist Jason Fagone comes at it from a very different angle. Jason asks what this technology is doing for us - and to us - on an emotional level, exploring what is already happening and where it may go. Millions of people across the world are already using AI to create 'companions' for themselves, a number that is growing wildly, and the ramifications of that are a vital part of our future as humans. We are experiencing what has been called an epidemic of loneliness and social AI could be the answer - but at what cost? What are the ramifications of putting our emotional energy into a completely unregulated part of the market? What does it look like when these platforms fail?
The Jessica Simulation is a story about connection and full of surprises. It's an AI love story; a moving human tale about the first person to use this groundbreaking technology to simulate a loved one they'd lost as the way into the most impactful technological development of our time.
When we think, talk, and write about AI, it tends to be in economic and existential ways. Will it take away our jobs? Will it ultimately grow too smart and destroy us? In The Jessica Simulation, journalist Jason Fagone comes at it from a very different angle. Jason asks what this technology is doing for us - and to us - on an emotional level, exploring what is already happening and where it may go. Millions of people across the world are already using AI to create 'companions' for themselves, a number that is growing wildly, and the ramifications of that are a vital part of our future as humans. We are experiencing what has been called an epidemic of loneliness and social AI could be the answer - but at what cost? What are the ramifications of putting our emotional energy into a completely unregulated part of the market? What does it look like when these platforms fail?
The Jessica Simulation is a story about connection and full of surprises. It's an AI love story; a moving human tale about the first person to use this groundbreaking technology to simulate a loved one they'd lost as the way into the most impactful technological development of our time.
Details
26 May 2026
9781785127519Imprint: Blink Publishing
