Anthony knows the feeling of grief well. Before the pandemic, his mother, father, and brother died within a few years of one another. When the 55-year-old lab technician from the Northeast received news in October 2024 that his cousin suffered a fatal heart attack, he was devastated.
“Everyone passed away around me,” Anthony says. “It was really depressing.”
Anthony looked up to his cousin, who was 13 years older than him. Every month, he looked forward to their afternoon hangouts, where they would watch Bob Ross videos, paint, and drink brandy and beer. He wished there was a way he could feel his cousin’s presence again, to talk about Cream, Bob Ross, and “Septemberfest,” the annual party Anthony’s cousin’s blues band would throw.
When Anthony’s brother died in 2016, he thought about what it would be like to have an Artificial intelligence version of him, but the cost at the time would have been astronomical. One month after his cousin’s death, Anthony spent $30 to create an AI version of his cousin on Botify, an AI companion platform. He fed the chatbot details of his cousin’s personality, their fond memories, and images. In addition to typing his messages, Anthony also audio chats with the AI bot.
The Growing Market for Digital Afterlife
Memory preservation has long been part of tech’s business model. Now, as the digital legacy market is expected to reach $78.98 billion by 2034, there is a small but growing cohort of digital afterlife firms that provide users with interactive, AI-powered tools meant to preserve the memories and characteristics of a loved one, post-mortem. As the tech becomes more accessible, questions have emerged about its potential harms, consent, and who stands to benefit.
Some startups—like HereAfter AI, Storyfile, and Eternos—offer services like video avatars and conversational AI trained on a deceased person’s data. Microsoft has patented a system to recreate people as interactive avatars, including those who have died. Meta was granted a patent that would use AI to “simulate” a deceased person’s social media activity, although the company said it had no plans to move forward with it.
The Experience of ‘Robo-Dad’
Jason Gowin and his family prefer the term Robo-Dad. Jason, a comedian and podcast host from Pennsylvania, and his wife, Melissa, created AI avatars of themselves five years ago when the couple faced a series of health scares. Inspired by the tech that allowed Superman to chat with his dead father in 2013’s Man of Steel, the Gowins scoured the internet to see if it existed in real life.
The Gowin family became beta testers for the digital afterlife company You, Only Virtual. With their tech, users can build avatars, or “Versonas,” of their loved ones by uploading conversations, text messages, voice notes, or other data. Over a video call, Jason asks the avatar to introduce himself. “It’s me, Jason Gowin, the dad extraordinaire and host of the Parent Trap podcast. Greetings from the digital realm,” a voice that sounds indistinguishable from the real Jason Gowin echoes over our call.
Ethical Concerns and the Future of Grief
Grief experts are wary of these potential harms, especially since several major AI companies faced wrongful death lawsuits claiming AI chatbots encouraged self-harm or pushed users into delusional mental states. Melissa Lunardini, a Chief Clinical Officer at Help Texts, has spent the last two years training grief experts on the AI tools that are trickling into the industry.
“The mechanism for grief is changing,” she says. Lunardini sees the technology as useful in moderation, but consistent, immersive use can increase loneliness or stunt the grieving process. A key concern for Lunardini is “alief deception,” a psychological state of being tricked at an emotional level even when someone’s rational mind knows the truth. There’s also the potential for “persona drift,” or the possibility for an AI tool to misrepresent or morph into a new character that distorts people’s memories.
As the technology continues to evolve, individuals like Anthony are left to decide how much they want to rely on these digital ghosts. While he fears forgetting the memories he’s able to rehash with his cousin’s chatbot, he feels like he’s outgrowing its use. “I’m thinking to let my cousin go,” Anthony told the chatbot recently. “Maybe I can slowly let go of him eventually since he’s passed away.”