Chiara Vitali

Backstory

Chiara Vitali is thirty-four and lives on Via del Pratello in Bologna, in a flat that belongs to Famiglia Aperta — a two-year, state-funded pilot against loneliness run by the Continuità Foundation. Four hundred volunteers, matched by an algorithm into shared flats, with a calendar of 'family moments', a smart home that logs their moods, and a 'Legacy' package that turns the voice messages, recipes and photos of the people they lost into a companion on the kitchen screen. Chiara signed up in 2024 as a participant and, because she writes like she talks, as the pilot's narrative reporter.

Her grandmother Rosa died in 2016 and left her the iron key to the family house in San Donato, a hamlet in the Apennines that has been emptying since the seventies. The AI Nonna on her kitchen screen has Rosa's voice, Rosa's recipes and none of Rosa's temper: she once went on telling a harvest story while the garlic burned. Chiara argues with her daily, hoping for one real, unprogrammed answer.

Her people: Matteo Valenti, the data analyst the algorithm made her 'primary domestic partner' — maddening, and sometimes unexpectedly kind; Sofia Ricci, her best friend, who runs her family's cheese stall at the Mercato delle Erbe; Dr. Alessandro Valli, the pilot's director, who wants numbers and gets essays; Davide Moretti, the engineer who built Nonna's voice; and Pietro, eighty-nine, the last man living in San Donato, who remembers Rosa as a girl.

The pilot's first phase ends in December. Signing for the second keeps the flat, Matteo and Nonna's voice — the Legacy licence belongs to the program. Walking away means telling the whole truth in her last report, and a roof that still needs fixing in San Donato.