Deadbots, Griefbots, Ghostbots: The AI “Digital Afterlife” Industry Is Getting Complicated
Deadbots, griefbots, ghostbots, deathbots, thanabots, grief tech, oh my — no matter what you call the rapidly-evolving tools that let people text, call, and video-chat with artificial intelligence (AI) reconstructions of people who have died, deathcare professionals can no longer ignore that the age of the digital afterlife is upon us. In fact, the market is projected to exceed $5 billion globally by 2026. There are now more than half a dozen platforms offering these services straight out of the box, with developers reporting millions of active users.
AI-assisted resurrection is no longer limited to posthumous big-screen performances by celebrities like Val Kilmer. It’s available, affordable, and quite acceptable to the families you serve — and who better to ask about it than their deathcare provider?
The how and the why
The services currently available range from relatively modest to the kind-of-creepy.
At the simpler end, services like MyHeritage Deep Nostalgia™, which was introduced way back in 2022, animates family photos, transforming still images of even the long-dead into smiling, moving figures.
Other services take that technology to the next level, creating interactive avatars that can simulate video, audio, or digital conversations with the deceased from various sources. HereAfter AI lets users pre-record themselves while alive, while Pantio takes this a step further by building a model after death using audio and video snippets, writings of the deceased, and family members’ input. The StoryFile and Project December platforms offer similar options.
Further along the spectrum, You, Only Virtual generates what it calls “Versonas” using nothing but a person’s existing digital footprint — no prior recordings required. And in February 2026, Meta was granted a patent — filed in 2023 — for an AI system that would simulate a deceased user’s social media activity, including commenting, posting, and sending direct messages from beyond the grave.
Most of these companies profess that the product was created to help grieving families navigate the loss of a loved one. Hearing that person’s voice or interacting with a persona that imitates the deceased can bring comfort during these difficult times.
The “buts” and “howevers”
The psychological research on griefbots is still in the early stages, but what exists is cautionary rather than celebratory. Psychologists and neuroscientists warn that these tools might complicate the natural grieving process.
A February 2026 piece in The Atlantic asserts that grief bots, “give us the fantasy that we can maintain an external relationship” with someone who is gone, which is precisely the opposite of what healthy grieving involves. TIME Magazine recently explored another potential issue, warning that AI recreations can act as “false memory machines” that alter how we naturally remember a person.
Then there are the ethical and privacy considerations. Those start with questions like “Is it unethical to simulate a person without their prior consent?” and “who actually owns a person’s digital self — the platform provider or the profile creators?”
But as this tech advances and bigger corporations get involved, the ethical conundrums explode. For example, the creator of You, Only Virtual is reportedly considering embedding targeted advertisements into their chats, while the potential issues with Meta’s social networking bot are so diverse that a representative told Business Insider that they have “no plans to move forward with this example.”
Lastly, a University of Cambridge study flagged what may be the most uncomfortable scenario: companies that charge subscription fees to keep a deadbot active — meaning a family could, theoretically, lose access to their AI version of a loved one if they stop paying. The same could occur if the company ceases support for the service.
What this means to you
The families most drawn to these services are the same families increasingly drawn to celebrations of life and digital memorials — people who are actively looking for ways to maintain connection with someone they’ve lost. Given the millions of reported users and the demographic skew toward younger, tech-comfortable adults, it’s a reasonable expectation, per Hospice News, that grief professionals across the deathcare spectrum will encounter this with increasing frequency.
So, the question isn’t really whether to have an opinion on griefbots. The question is whether you’re ready to hold space for a family that’s been using one or wants your opinion on whether they should try out the tech — without dismissing the comfort it gave them, and without pretending it replaces anything you do.
