Digital afterlives – How AI is bringing the dead back online
New research by digital media scholars Eva Nieto McAvoy of King’s College London and Jenny Kidd of Cardiff University explores how so-called “deathbots” are transforming remembrance into an interactive, and increasingly commercial, experience, Kazinform News Agency correspondent reports.
Their study, published in Memory, Mind & Media of Cambridge University Press and summarised in The Conversation, examines how AI platforms promise “synthetic afterlives”: digital avatars that recreate the voices, personalities, and memories of deceased people.
Built from messages, voice notes, or social media posts, these chatbots simulate conversation with the dead, sometimes convincingly, sometimes awkwardly, and always revealing more about the technology behind them than about the people they imitate.
The researchers conducted in-depth “walkthroughs” of four active services: Almaya, HereAfter, Seance AI, and You, Only Virtual. Each offers a different model of remembrance. Almaya and HereAfter focus on structured storytelling: users record short videos or voice memories that loved ones can later browse or query using a virtual assistant. The goal is preservation, a digital autobiography organized for future generations.
By contrast, Seance AI and You, Only Virtual employ generative AI to produce new dialogue. Users upload data from a deceased person (texts, emails, social posts) and the system builds a conversational agent that learns and adapts over time. Some even clone the person’s voice, letting relatives “chat” with an audio likeness of the departed.
But while these systems invite emotional connection, they also expose a deeper discomfort. Responses can sound mechanical or misplaced: cheerful emojis appearing in messages about death, or repetitive phrases lifted verbatim from the user’s own input.
What these services call “memories” are, in practice, algorithmic reconstructions. Almaya and HereAfter archive and index genuine material, treating the past as something fixed and retrievable. Generative platforms, on the other hand, invent plausible fragments of the past, a kind of synthetic memory produced on demand.
And beneath the sentiment lies a familiar business model. Most platforms charge subscription fees or offer “freemium” access tiers, partnering with insurers, care providers, or museums. Memory, once a personal act, becomes a service to design, measure, and sell.
The study situates this phenomenon within what philosophers Carl Öhman and Luciano Floridi call the “political economy of death”, a marketplace where digital traces continue to generate profit long after life ends. In this context, deathbots are not neutral memorials but data-driven products optimized for engagement.
Earlier, Kazinform News Agency reported on how AI can imitate anyone’s voice live.