Bot or Not To Bot? The Commodification of Grief

In March 2026, I attended the International Death, Grief and Bereavement Conference in Wisconsin where I first learned about bereavement support by griefbots, a type of Large Language Model. Griefbots have been operating and available to the public since 2025.

Natasha Fernandez, at the University of Alabama, offers this definition: “Griefbots are an emerging technological phenomenon designed to mimic deceased individuals’ speech, behaviors, and even personalities. These digital entities are often powered by artificial intelligence, trained on data such as text messages, social media posts, and recorded conversations of the deceased” (“Griefbots: Blurring the Reality of Death and the Illusion of Life”). This is exactly as it was presented during the Wisconsin conference.

The presenter showed us a griefbot generated from a twelve-second phone recording of her mother. The bot displayed speech patterns and vocabulary, facial expressions, body movements that appeared to be consistent with what we observed in the brief sample video of the target subject. The presenter verified that the bot had captured much that was similar in her mother’s actual appearance, speech and behaviors even though the sample video of her mother was brief.

We discussed ethics: Since most bereavement bot services charge either through subscription or minute-by-minute, what would happen to a client whose subscription lapsed? Would this prolong the grief process and direct the client’s attention away from the loss and towards re-engaging with the bot?

With the sycophancy common to all AI services, including Chat GPT, Claude, et al, the focus of griefbot services is client engagement to insure a continuing and profit-driven relationship. In their February 2025 article, A.N. Fernandez states, “These algorithms might even subtly adjust the bot’s personality to make it more appealing over time, creating a pleasing caricature rather than an accurate reflection of the deceased” (Fernandez). So, while appearing to be a compassionate tool, griefbots may significantly hinder the client’s adjust to their loss.

Memory, what we use to store and retrieve past experiences that influence future decisions, is already slippery. Siblings attending the same birthday party may have completely different recollections of the event, let alone emotional recollections of parenting, arguments, emotional attachments. For those with childhood abuse, abandonment or neglect, memory becomes specifically impacted. As the griefbot manufactures memory, the natural memory retrieval system becomes distorted and the client becomes increasingly emotionally dependent on their griefbot instead of learning to integrate loss into their life. Also, they may be poorly influenced in making future decisions if the memories they draw on are manufactured. In Cristina Voinea’s article “On Grief and Griefbots”, she states, “At the neurocognitive level, grieving is the brain's effort to update its model of the world.” This crucial development is significantly elided with a griefbot that can adapt and process new information but cannot offer emotional development.

In August 2026, I attended the Grief Therapy Retreat run by Portland’s Institute for Loss and Transition where the use of griefbots in tandem with traditional therapy was presented as a potential tool in assisting the client through loss. However, as we have become highly primed (is that why Amazon Prime was so-named?) for immediate gratification, the bot is available 24/7 while the therapist is not. But while the bot can offer comfort — a type of emotional pacifier — it cannot offer dispassionate observation, analysis, or assessment. Replika, one of the first companies to offer griefbots has, as part of its tagline, “always there to listen and talk, always on your side” (Replika via Cristina Voinea). The “always on your side” should be a red flag for all grief practitioners.

If the client knows the therapist advocates for a more balanced AI intake, they may lie to the therapist about the level of their consumption because the bot is an instant “fix” whereas the processing of grief entails effort, discomfort and emotional growth.

The use of bereavement bots is growing — somewhere in the thousands — as is the discussion of their use. The commodification of grief that has been around for centuries in funerals and memorials, has been updated. Griefbots, the latest in profit-driven death industries, will continue to increase in nuance and sophistication. As Hernandez suggests, perhaps it’s time to examine all paid death-related services around grief.

WORKS CITED

Fernandez, A. N. (2025, February 7). GriefBots: Blurring the reality of death and the illusion of life – UAB Institute for Human Rights blog. https://sites.uab.edu/humanrights/2025/02/07/griefbots-blurring-the-reality-of-death-and-the-illusion-of-life/ Accessed 25 Sept 2026.

Voinea, C. (2024). On Grief and griefbots. Think, 23(67), 47–51. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1477175623000490. Accessed 25 Sept 2026.

NO AI WAS USED IN THE WRITING OF THIS ARTICLE