What was Project December?
Jason Rohrer is an independent video game designer from Davis, California, known for games that aim to move players emotionally. In the summer of 2020, while his family moved between rentals to escape wildfire smoke, he wrote a chat service on top of OpenAI’s language models GPT-2 and GPT-3. At the time GPT-3 was only open to private beta testers; Rohrer was using a login a follower had sent him.
He called the site Project December and gave it a deliberately retro look, like an old computer terminal. Users could chat with built-in characters, such as “Samantha”, inspired by the AI in the film Her, or design their own. A custom bot needed only two things: a sample of how the character talks and a short paragraph describing the situation.
Two design choices mattered later. Each bot had a limited life, paid for with credits, and when it ran out the chat ended and the bot was gone. And the randomness setting was high, so no bot could ever be recreated exactly.
Joshua and Jessica
Joshua Barbeau met Jessica Pereira in Ottawa in 2010, when both were finishing high school courses as adults. Jessica had autoimmune hepatitis and had received a liver transplant at the age of nine. In 2012 her transplanted liver began to fail. She died on 11 December 2012, aged 23.
For years Joshua struggled with grief. He joined a grief group and wrote letters to Jessica as a homework exercise, but found the illusion hard to sustain. By 2020 he was 33, a freelance writer living in Bradford, Ontario, and more isolated than ever during the pandemic lockdowns.
The night of 24 September 2020
Unable to sleep in the early hours, Joshua opened Project December’s custom bot area. He had kept all of Jessica’s old texts and Facebook messages. He chose a few that sounded like her and spent about an hour writing a paragraph about her personality, her love of astrology and coincidences, and their relationship. He chose GPT-3 to power it.
The conversation that followed lasted about ten hours, with breaks for sleep. The bot was often wrong about details, but it echoed Jessica’s playful texting habits closely enough that he broke down in tears and said things he had never managed to say. He told the Chronicle he understood what it was: “Intellectually, I know it’s not really Jessica.”
Afterwards he rationed the bot’s remaining life, returning only briefly, including on her birthday. He decided never to create a new version, and did not want to watch it “die” on screen. Over the following months he felt his survivor’s guilt ease, though he did not claim the bot had healed his grief.
Family, consent and the Chronicle story
Joshua posted a short excerpt on Reddit. When journalist Jason Fagone asked to interview him, Joshua told Jessica’s family about the simulation for the first time and asked their permission to speak about it. They agreed.
Their reactions differed. Her mother was glad if it comforted him but did not want to talk to an AI version herself. Her sister Amanda read the transcript, recognised some of Jessica’s style, and asked a hard question: what happens to a grieving person if the AI is suddenly no longer available?
The San Francisco Chronicle published “The Jessica Simulation” on 23 July 2021. With Joshua’s permission, Rohrer helped the newspaper confirm that the chat transcripts had not been altered.
OpenAI steps in, and what came next
The article brought thousands of new users. According to The Register, OpenAI then asked Rohrer to stop users from creating open-ended custom bots, to add content filters, and to install automated monitoring of conversations. Rohrer refused, and OpenAI ended his access to its models in September 2021.
Project December carried on with other models. In 2022 Rohrer relaunched it as a service built specifically for simulating people who have died, in which users fill in a questionnaire about the person. It later featured in the documentary Eternal You (2024).
What the story revealed
| Lesson | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| A few messages were enough | Large language models could imitate a texting style from a tiny sample. Building a griefbot no longer needed engineers. |
| The mourner shapes the bot | Each new message, including Joshua’s, became part of the bot’s context, so his own words steered its replies. |
| Design choices carry emotional weight | A bot that “dies” when credits run out is a technical limit that can feel like a second loss. |
| Access can disappear | Amanda’s question proved real within weeks, when OpenAI cut off the site’s main model. |
| The person simulated cannot consent | Jessica never chose this. Her family agreed to the story, not to the simulation. |
Compare this with the Dadbot, which was scripted line by line with the father’s agreement, and with the Roman Mazurenko bot, where friends and family contributed messages.
If this story speaks to you
Joshua’s experience is one person’s story, not a recommendation. Grief researchers still know little about who is helped and who is harmed by griefbots. Our page Is grief tech healthy? summarises what is known.
Memory Clone is a Windows app, in alpha, that builds a private AI simulation from chats you export yourself. It is designed around some of the lessons above: imported originals stay on your PC, it never writes first unless you switch on check-ins, there is no countdown or “death”, and you can archive or delete a clone at any time. It is always presented as AI, and it can still be wrong. If you feel ready, read more on the download page.
If you are in crisis or thinking about harming yourself, contact your local emergency number now. You can also reach: UK & Ireland Samaritans, 116 123; United States 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, call or text 988; elsewhere find a free, confidential helpline at findahelpline.com.
Häufig gestellte Fragen
Is Project December still running?
Its website is still online. After OpenAI cut off access in 2021, Rohrer switched to other language models and in 2022 relaunched it as a service for simulating people who have died.
What AI did Project December use?
In 2020 it used OpenAI’s GPT-2 and GPT-3. After September 2021 it moved to other models; The Register reported in 2022 that it used a model from AI21 Labs.
Why did OpenAI shut off Project December?
According to The Register, OpenAI asked for limits on custom bots, content filtering and automated monitoring. Rohrer refused, so his access ended in September 2021.
Did Jessica’s family approve?
They gave Joshua permission to talk to the press about it. Her mother chose not to use an AI version herself, and one sister raised concerns about vulnerable mourners.
Quellen
Geprüft am . Produkte und Hilfeseiten von Drittanbietern ändern sich häufig; folge den Links für aktuelle Details.
- The Jessica Simulation: Love and loss in the age of A.I. (Jason Fagone, 2021) (San Francisco Chronicle)
- A developer built an AI chatbot using GPT-3 that helped a man speak again to his late fiancée. OpenAI shut it down (Katyanna Quach, 2021) (The Register)
- Report on Project December’s relaunch as a service for simulating the dead (Katyanna Quach, 2022) (The Register)
- Project December (Jason Rohrer)
- Eternal You (2024 documentary) (Wikipedia)
- Hollanek & Nowaczyk-Basińska, “Griefbots, Deadbots, Postmortem Avatars” (Philosophy & Technology, 2024) (Springer)
This article is general information, not medical, legal or financial advice. Memory Clone creates an AI simulation from the material you provide; it is not the person.