PetEcho: Using AI to Accompany Users Through Pet Loss Grief, A Grief Counseling Prototype Based on Large Language Models

The PetEcho project focuses on the often-overlooked emotional needs of pet loss. Leveraging large language model technology, it offers users private, accessible intelligent grief counseling through features like pet memory retrieval, psychological strategy control, and phased grief support—making it a warm attempt to combine technology with humanistic care.

The grief from pet loss is real and profound, yet society often underestimates its emotional impact. Traditional psychological counseling is expensive, and not everyone is willing to seek professional help. PetEcho aims to fill this gap by providing a private, non-judgmental support channel, allowing users to process grief at their own pace and revisit beautiful memories with their pets.

PetEcho adopts a "stage-based" design approach based on grief psychology insights (e.g., the dynamic stages of the Kübler-Ross model). It designs interaction modes for different stages: focusing on listening and emotional validation in the early stage, guiding memory recall to build emotional connections in the middle stage, and helping find commemoration ways to turn grief into strength in the later stage.

1. Pet Memory Retrieval: Processes multimodal data (text, photos, etc.) and evokes relevant memories via semantic association using large language models; 2. Psychological Strategy Control: Identifies users' emotional states and risk signals, balancing support and avoiding secondary harm through prompt engineering or emotion classifiers; 3. Emotional Generation Capability: Empathizes with users' emotions, generates personalized responses (citing pet details), and adaptively adjusts communication styles.

Typical scenarios: Users vent emotions, create digital memorial albums, get support for new pet decisions, etc. Comparative advantages: 24/7 instant response, more personalized as interactions deepen; compared to other AI mental health apps, it focuses on the pet loss field and provides more in-depth relevant support.

PetEcho is positioned as a support tool rather than a medical substitute. It recommends professional help when complex grief or depression is identified; prioritizes privacy protection (local deployment/end-to-end encryption); prevents excessive emotional dependence and encourages real-world social interaction; maintains transparency so users know they are interacting with AI.

The technical framework can be extended to support other loss types (e.g., loved one's passing, relationship endings); it represents AI's direction toward emotional intelligence, showing technology can provide caring companionship and enhance human well-being—an important exploration of humanistic-oriented AI applications.