Here’s Why I Built an AI Chatbot for My Dad’s Prison Tablet | The Marshall Project
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Filed<br>6:00 a.m. EDT
08.14.2026
Life Inside
My Dad Is in Prison. Here’s Why I Built an AI Chatbot for His Electronic Tablet.
CJ Jones’ dad had endless questions about the outside world. So the techie built a digital tool to help answer them — and deepen their relationship.
Blane Asrat for The Marshall Project
By Cj Jones as told to Ivy Scott
Technology analyst CJ Jones was inspired to learn to code after years talking on the phone with his father, Charles Jones Sr., who is currently incarcerated in Missouri state prison. He built a tool that would allow his dad to send prompts to an AI chatbot — similar to ChatGPT or Claude — as a contact on his prison tablet. The family named the new contact Nova. Since his dad first tried Nova in 2024 and shared it with his friends, the tool has grown into a full-fledged, for-profit company called Beyond Bars AI.
The large language models (LLMs) that form the basis for AI chatbots are an emerging and imperfect technology.. Jones acknowledged that the tool can provide incorrect information, often called hallucinations, and should not be confused for a conversation with a real person. While these tools can be a helpful resource, Jones stressed that they should not be relied on as a source of legal or medical advice and are not a substitute for a lawyer, doctor or other direct-services provider. The Marshall Project is choosing to tell Jones’ story because it illustrates how incarcerated people and their families are constantly in pursuit of creative solutions to the challenges of life behind bars and the frustrations of the criminal-legal system.
My dad has been incarcerated my whole life, since I was 1 year old. My whole childhood, my life in general, was a practice of connecting between these two very different worlds: I was growing up out here, and he was in there. And so the way we stayed connected was through the phone and through technology, because that was the thing we were interested in.
We’d call and I would tell him what’s going on with me and what’s new with the world. And at some point, I realized that [he’d been inside since] what? 1999? He barely knows what Google is, right? So if I’m out here struggling to keep up with how fast everything is changing, you can imagine how difficult it is for him. And when I think about him getting out, I really just wanted him to have a window into the modern world so when he gets out he won’t be so green and fresh to it, but actually ready to rock and roll.
I’m biased, obviously, but I think my dad is pretty smart. But even still, you can’t do much if you don’t understand the mediums of the world today. I noticed that all the stuff he wants to do in terms of being better, getting back on his feet after he gets out, it requires [tools of] the modern age — emails, websites — that he doesn’t understand.
We would have this rhythm where he would call me and I would look stuff up for him. A lot of times it was like the status of a [legislative] bill. So he would call me, I’d look it up, using Google and citing my sources and stuff, and I’d tell him the status of it. But then, over time, I would take exactly what he asked me and put it into ChatGPT — this is very early ChatGPT, like three years ago. And one time I was doing that and I realized, I’m not adding value to the interaction anymore. I was just a pipe to this other thing that provided the value. So I thought, Well, why don’t I just give you this capability to search for yourself?
My dad is in Missouri, which uses Securus tablets. And so through their e-messaging, I basically set up a bare-bones system where he could add [a chatbot I called] Nova as a contact on his tablet. It would automatically read, process and respond the way a human might, just more tirelessly. Now, there are two modalities: There’s Nova you can call on the phone, and then there’s Nova you can text through e-messaging.
He was definitely excited about the idea, because you know, they don’t get a ton of new [technology in prison], and my dad is the type of person who would have always had the latest iPhone. But I think he was still reluctant because he really had no idea how to use it. And so it took him a while to get used to because it’s not...