Justin Harrison's mother passed away in 2022, but he still speaks with her every week.
While his mother was still alive, Harrison recreated her virtually using generative artificial intelligence (AI) trained on videos, audio recordings, text messages, and basic information about her. This virtual persona, or "versona," interacts with him and speaks much in the same way his mother did. He calls her after small wins, such as running a mile, or difficult times, such as when he's sick.
Harrison turned his process into a platform called You, Only Virtual (YOV), and his mother is now one among thousands who exist virtually, resurrected after death.
The idea of technology role-playing as a human is not new -- MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum created ELIZA, a chatbot cast as a psychotherapist, in the mid-1960s. The advent of large language models, however, led to growing accessibility and democratization of so-called "immortalization tools," said Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basińska, PhD, a University of Cambridge research fellow studying how new technologies shape our understanding of death, loss, grief, and afterlife presence.
"Over the past decade, we have witnessed a transformation from a relatively marginalized niche of immortality-related technologies to a fully independent and autonomous market known as the 'digital afterlife industry,'" she said.
Of course, AI developers don't do small or subtle. So the digital afterlife industry uses its immortality tools to create the third bit of new vocabulary: "griefbots," the name given to AI simulations of the deceased.
All new tech begs the same question: Is this a good or bad thing? Griefbots are no different and answer the question the same way a lot of tech does: It depends how people use it.
Courting the Bereaved
While each commercial griefbot is unique, they all share a common goal: talking to the living. YOV is developing AI personas trained on a loved one's texts, voice recordings, and videos to replicate the deceased. HereAfter AI allows people to record life stories that can later be turned into interactive voice bots. Replika, originally a personal AI chatbot, has been used to mimic deceased individuals. StoryFile offers a more scripted approach, turning video interviews into interactive posthumous Q&A sessions.
2wai, a company that promises "an avatar for everything" and can let you chat with William Shakespeare, recently debuted a nearly 2-minute commercial telling an entire griefbot story: A pregnant woman has video chats with her deceased mother -- an AI avatar -- and we see grandma is on their phones for the entirety of the newborn's childhood. The grown-up kid even consults grandma at age 30. That decades-long promise goes beyond simple grief closure.
Because griefbots are such a new technology, little data exist on their effects. "For some people, using the simulation of a deceased loved one might be comforting and helpful during this difficult time, while for others, it might be emotionally draining or even devastating," said Nowaczyk-Basińska.
The most enduring psychiatric idea in grief is that one must "let go" and accept death to move on. But even that can be unpredictable whether you're talking about a single person or an entire population. Previous research has shown that high levels of "continuing bonds" with deceased loved ones could be positive after 18 months (in China) or negative (in the US).
Meanwhile, an advertisement promoting a 30-year relationship from birth with one's deceased grandmother suggests that closure isn't part of the business model.
So how can griefbots help? How can they hurt?
The Helpful Scenario
In 2016, a rare disease took Jang Ji-sung's 7-year-old daughter. Ji-sung's mental health deteriorated into a state of obsession, and for the next 3 years, she filled her home with photographs of her daughter and "often [talked] to the sky" waiting for an answer. Her experience became one of the first griefbot stories.
In 2020, a South Korean TV network used photographs, memories, and the latest virtual reality technology at the time to recreate Ji-sung's daughter. The video of their meeting is intense. After the experience, Ji-sung told ABC Australia that though the virtual version did not look like her actual daughter, it felt real, and "as time passed, I felt my heart becoming lighter and more comfortable."
Part of her relief may be because intense and lasting grief, particularly that of prolonged grief disorder (PGD), has a notable physical component. Studies show that compared with normal grief, PGD changes central nervous system (CNS) activity in brain regions including the amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and nucleus accumbens -- which could explain some of its symptoms.
Interaction with a griefbot is primarily a visual experience, a lifelike animated loved one on as big a screen as you want. Because vision is the only sense with its receptor (the retina) and primary pathway (optic nerve) residing in the CNS, "there is a possibility griefbots could settle something in someone quickly because it goes directly to the central nervous system in a way that taste, smell, and sound do not," said Meghan Jarvis, MA, LCSW, a clinical psychotherapist specializing in trauma and grief.
But the medical community must take precautions, said Nowaczyk-Basińska. "Given that grief is a very individual, nonlinear, and context-specific experience, we should be very careful about seeking a 'standardized' way of processing grief with the assistance of AI," she said.
How Griefbots Could Hurt
Alan Wolfelt, PhD, a clinical psychologist and director of the Center for Loss & Life Transition in Fort Collins, Colorado, has helped thousands of individuals through the loss of a loved one. Acknowledging the reality of the death is the linchpin need Wolfelt identified in his work as universal across mourners.
Grief, says Wolfelt, is what you think and feel inside after someone you love dies. Mourning is the outward expression of those thoughts and feelings and a requisite to healing. The buck up, carry on, keep your chin up messages pervading Western culture allow people to grieve, not mourn.
"The use of this technology is another invitation -- instead of outwardly mourning and acknowledging the reality of the death -- to stay stuck instead of experiencing perturbation, or the capacity to experience change and movement," Wolfelt said.
Evading grief leads to problems in the long run, said Jodi Halpern, MD, PhD, co-founder and co-director, Berkeley Ethics and Regulation Group for Innovative Technologies and the Kavli Center for Ethics, Science and the Public. "When people avoid grieving, they constrain their reality," she said. "They can become driven to keep themselves in a cheerful state of mind. Some people overwork or overexercise or use drugs and substances or other activities that keep them dissociated from themselves. All of which can become dangerous for their health and their wellbeing."
People also unconsciously use the defense mechanisms they develop during infancy and early childhood, including denial, regression, and dissociation, said Halpern. During child development -- until at least age 18 -- we develop our basic psychological capacities to cope with reality, internalize difficult experiences, become resilient, have a realistic sense of what it is to be human, and develop empathy. They are influenced by early relationships and experiences. "I don't know how that will develop if children are deceived into thinking that people that they really love, someone as important as a parent, is not dead," she said.
With the widespread accessibility to chatbots, Halpern recommends regulating griefbots as if they were a medical intervention as invasive as some physical surgeries, especially when it comes to minors. "Physicians need to pay attention to how their patients and families are using it. If they glean that it is being used to deny the death of a relative for a minor, they need to talk to that patient and family about the possible risks to the psychological emotional development," she said.
A small study from the University of Kent explored how mourners responded to griefbots, with participants having lost loved ones anywhere from immediately before to 8 years prior. One user, who simulated her father 2 months after his death, said it was comforting to have another avenue to process what she was thinking and going through, without having to repeat it constantly to friends and family. She described the tool as "complementary," but added, "talking to my friends and family was more effective."
Here Comes the Future
Therapy and companionship are the leading use cases for generative AI in 2025, according to a Harvard Business Review analysis. As access to griefbot technology expands, its use will grow, and this digital afterlife industry isn't confined to one-on-one grief therapy. It's entering the culture at large.
In August 2025, journalist Jim Acosta did a "one-of-a-kind" interview with the AI avatar of Joaquin Oliver, one of the 17 victims of the 2018 Marjorie Stoneman Douglas high school mass shooting in Parkland, Florida. And an avatar of Chris Pelkey, an Arizona road rage victim, addressed the courtroom during the sentencing phase of his killer's trial in May of this year, 4 years after his death. Pelkey's sister created the avatar, which expressed forgiveness.
In the end, it's up to each practitioner to pay close attention when this tech shows up.
"Physicians have an important leadership role to play in thinking about how intimate emotional technologies are affecting people's mental wellbeing and sense of what it is to be human," said Halpern. She suggests approaching this tool with curiosity, documenting outcomes, and helping the broader community understand its impact. Because like a persistent AI grandmother, griefbots may never die.
