AI and the Afterlife

As AI systems improve in both breadth and depth of performance, they make it possible to create increasingly realistic agents—including agents modeled on specific people. We anticipate that within our lifetimes it may become common practice for people to create “generative ghosts”: AI agents that represent the deceased and that the living can converse with.

These technologies are likely to reshape existing practices—and give rise to novel ones—around end-of-life planning, remembrance, and legacy, with profound legal, economic, emotional, and religious ramifications. This project examines how people understand and engage with AI afterlives, the design considerations they raise, and the benefits and risks of building agents that speak for those who have died.

Since naming that design space, we have run the first user-experience study of people in conversation with these systems, and a follow-up study is in data collection now. Using AI to help people explore personal, family, and cultural archives is a follow-up area we’ve been considering as well.

Researchers

Jack Manning, Dylan Thomas Doyle, Anthony Pinter, Daniel Sullivan, Joseph Trybala, Ella Krelovich, Jed Brubaker

Publications

Designing Conversations with the Dead: How People Engage with Generative Ghosts Manning, Jack M. and Sullivan, Daniel and Doyle, Dylan Thomas and Pinter, Anthony T. and Brubaker, Jed R.
Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference

Reference
BibTeX
DOI: 10.1145/3800645.3813090

@inproceedings{manningDesigningConversationsDead2026,
  author = {Manning, Jack M. and Sullivan, Daniel and Doyle, Dylan Thomas and Pinter, Anthony T. and Brubaker, Jed R.},
  title = {Designing Conversations with the Dead: How People Engage with Generative Ghosts},
  year = {2026},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference},
  series = {DIS '26},
  doi = {10.1145/3800645.3813090},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3800645.3813090},
  keywords = {AI afterlife, death, digital legacy, generative AI, generative ghosts},
  tags = {generative-ghosts,ai-afterlife}
}

Speculating the Afterlife: Reimagining Possibilities for AI and Its Impact on Memorialization, Grief, and Continuing Bonds Brubaker, Jed R. and Borovica, Tamara and Gerber, Katrin and McGrane, Caitlin and Hjorth, Larissa
Thanatos 14
- Abstract
- Reference
- BibTeX
- DOI: 10.57124/thanatos.162347
Popular narratives about artificial intelligence (AI) and the afterlife provide a narrow vision of grief, memory, and technology. To foster a broader view of what AI might make possible in the context of death, we hosted a speculative design workshop with interdisciplinary experts. Through a series of design exercises and group discussions, participants were encouraged to develop novel ideas including memorialization and critically reflect on the opportunities and challenges. Our analysis identified four thematic areas: reimagining memorialization practices; grappling with ethical and practical concerns around data; reshaping continuing bonds with the dead; and confronting the commercial and infrastructural challenges of sustaining grief technologies. In our discussion, we argue that AI technologies offer openings for cultural critique and emotional insight. In broadening our vision for AI, this paper provides a more pluralistic and emotionally attuned vision for how AI might shape experiences of grief and memorialization.
Generative Ghosts: Anticipating Benefits and Risks of AI Afterlives Morris, Meredith Ringel and Brubaker, Jed R.
Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
- Abstract
- Reference
- BibTeX
- DOI: 10.1145/3706598.3713758
As AI systems quickly improve in both breadth and depth of performance, they lend themselves to creating increasingly powerful and realistic agents, including the possibility of agents modeled on specific people. We anticipate that within our lifetimes it may become common practice for people to create custom AI agents to interact with loved ones and/or the broader world after death; indeed, the past year has seen a boom in startups purporting to offer such services. We call these generative ghosts since such agents will be capable of generating novel content rather than merely parroting content produced by their creator while living. In this paper, we reflect on the history of technologies for AI afterlives, including current early attempts by individual enthusiasts and startup companies to create generative ghosts. We then introduce a novel design space detailing potential implementations of generative ghosts. We use this analytic framework to ground a discussion of the practical and ethical implications of various approaches to designing generative ghosts, including potential positive and negative impacts on individuals and society. Based on these considerations, we lay out a research agenda for the AI and HCI research communities to better understand the risk/benefit landscape of this novel technology to ultimately empower people who wish to create and interact with AI afterlives to do so in a beneficial manner.
AI and the Afterlife Brubaker, Jed R. and Morris, Meredith Ringel and Doyle, Dylan Thomas and Fiesler, Casey and Gibbs, Martin and McGrenere, Joanna
Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
- Abstract
- Reference
- BibTeX
- DOI: 10.1145/3613905.3636321
AI technologies are likely to impact an array of existing practices (and give rise to a host of novel ones) around end-of-life planning, remembrance, and legacy in ways that will have profound legal, economic, emotional, and religious ramifications. At this critical moment of technological change, there is an opportunity for the HCI community to shape the discourse on this important topic through value-sensitive and community-centered approaches. This workshop will bring together a broad group of academics and practitioners with varied perspectives including HCI, AI, and other relevant disciplines (e.g., law, economics, religious studies, etc.) to support community-building, agenda-setting, and prototyping activities among scholars and practitioners interested in the nascent topic of how advances in AI will change socio-technical practices around death, remembrance, and legacy.

Press

‘I created my mom and talk to her’: AI ghosts and deathslop are changing the way we mourn The Guardian · Alaina Demopoulos · September 15, 2026
A Dead Father, Reincarnated With AI: Is This How We Will Remember Loved Ones Now? The Wall Street Journal · Julie Jargon · September 12, 2026
If you could chat with an AI ghost, what would you want them to say? New study explores CU Boulder Today · Lisa Marshall · June 29, 2026