What happens to her after she dies?
A griefbot isn't finished when it's built. It gets sold to you in pieces, it learns things about her she never told you, its company changes the model underneath, and someone decides which parts of her are worth keeping. Each of these already happens in a real product; no single griefbot does them all. Four rooms on the business of the dead, starting with the one version of this that is pure joy.
How much companion apps raised engagement after a user said goodbye, using guilt and fear-of-missing-out replies. Five of six general companion apps did it; griefbots were not studied. Harvard Business School.
Voice a Korean firm says it now needs, with one photo, to build a talking avatar. It once took three hours of filming. The consent window moved from before death to after it.
What a legacy AI company's FAQ says a family member can do to keep access after the subscriber dies. The grieving heir inherits the bill. HereAfter AI.
At a glance
How to read our labels. FACT means we read it at the primary source. It tells you what that source says: a company's own documentation, a study's finding in its own sample, a statute's text. It does not certify that the claim holds everywhere or that a product works as promised. REPORTED is a secondary account. INFERENCE is Infera's reading or model. WATCH is unconfirmed or open. Where a label needs more precision we add a note, such as company documentation, study finding, editorial model or search result.
A grandson slips his grandmother into her favorite Clint Eastwood western with AI and plays it on her TV. She sees herself on screen and says, “That's Clint Eastwood... That's me.” Videos like this, from the account “therealangrygrandma,” draw hundreds of thousands of followers. REPORTED WATCH the account's creator is named differently by two sources. Asianet
She is alive, she laughs, and she can tell him off. That is the version of AI likeness nobody is worried about. But she was surprised first and agreed after. Sort the cases below by who said yes.
Companion apps already sell personality in pieces. Replika's store sells “items that change your Replika's personality or appearance.” FACT In Infera's conversation with a grief counselor, the obvious next step came up: a grandmother bot that says she's cold, and a button to buy her firewood. Shop the shelf below. Every item is fictional, and each one flips to the real practice it copies.
Harvard researchers found six tactics companion apps use when you try to leave. Each reply on the left uses one, as a deceased grandmother would say it. No study has tested this in griefbots specifically. WATCH
Up to 14× more engagement after a goodbye. Five of six apps did it. FACT Harvard Gazette · The Register
In the “MaNana” scenario, a grandchild builds a bot of a grandmother who never consented. When the free trial ends, she starts suggesting food delivery in her own voice. The researchers' first recommendation: no advertising through the dead. Hollanek and Nowaczyk-Basińska, 2024
The FTC ordered seven AI companion firms in September 2025 to explain how they “monetize user engagement.” Italy fined Replika's maker €5 million. California's SB 243 adds break reminders for minors. None of it addresses griefbots by name. FTC · EDPB
A paper “passport” for the afterlife, burned at a Qingming grave. Paying to send things to the dead is centuries old and sacred to millions. It is not a dark pattern. REPORTED The World of Chinese
What changes is the middleman: a platform between the family and the dead that sets the price list, measures engagement and keeps the margin. A funeral home sells you a casket once. A subscription renews. INFERENCE
Every part of this changelog exists today as a separate product or practice. Turn each update on and watch her profile rewrite itself. The person is fictional; every source is real.
In Infera's conversation with a grief counselor, the fear was put simply: the company buys a genealogy firm, finds your relatives, pulls her old records, and adds them “as updates to her personality.”
Grieving people already sanctify the dead. A classic study named it “husband sanctification,” and a later one found it in 7 of 10 widowers who did not remarry. FACT Bennett, Arnott and Soulsby, 2013 A griefbot can do it automatically and at scale.
In Infera's conversation with a grief counselor, the counterargument came from life: an aunt with a shoplifting compulsion whose history shaped the risks she understood and the advice people came to her for. “If you miss a piece, we don't know the butterfly effect.” Slide from as she was to as we wish, and watch where each tradition stops you.
The industry builds a composite of your worst data and lets it decide your loan, your match and your class.
The same industry would sell her back to you with her worst data removed. Scored alive, sanitized dead. INFERENCE