A bizarre new app called “Vera AI” claims it allows its users to create copies of “your friends or family members,” a puzzlingly brazen use of AI tech that doesn’t even try to hide the fact that it’s looking to replace human connection. The app’s marketing materials even suggest that it can even be used to “recreate someone you miss… and keep talking without limits” — strongly implying that it’s designed to allow you to reconnect with dead relatives. “How is your dad doing recently?” an AI chatbot called “Granma [sic] Ellie” asks in the screenshot. The internet wasn’t exactly impressed with the proposition. “Absolutely the fuck not,” freelance medical editor Robin Marwick wrote in a blunt post on Bluesky. “Literally the plot of a ‘Black Mirror’ episode,” another user weighed in. The description of the app on the Google Play store is a suspicious word soup of redundant claims, boasting that it’s the “first AI friend with emotional intelligence” and the “first chatbot product that actually behaves like a real person” — easily disproven claims given the wealth of other apps just like it. Mysteriously, the company’s copy appears to have been altered after Futurism reached out for comment. “Whether you’ve lost a dear one or you simply want to get closer to someone you don’t see often enough, Vera AI is the right app for you,” a previous version of the app’s description reads. “Recreate anybody you can think of & have real & intimate conversations with them.” Was…Internet Horrified at AI App for Cloning Dead Family Members