AI and Remembering the Dead: What Is Possible, What Is Appropriate and What to Watch Out For

People have always kept the memory of loved ones: photo albums, letters, voice recordings, belongings. Now artificial intelligence tools have joined them. Some of them simply help to keep and restore what exists. Others no longer preserve but re-create: they “bring to life” a face in a photo, synthesize a voice or hold a conversation on behalf of a person who has died.

In this article we calmly go through what is technically possible, what researchers and grief specialists say about the effect on mental health, how consent, law and privacy look as of October 2026, and how to approach all this carefully. We do not recommend any particular service as “the best” and do not encourage anyone to use them. For many people, the best choice will be an ordinary photo album, a letter or a conversation with loved ones.

We checked the facts about services, research and laws against official sources on 23 October 2026. Services change, so read the current terms on their websites before using them.

Four levels: from an album to a “digital twin”

The tools people use to remember the dead can be divided into four levels. The higher the level, the more of the result is something that never actually happened.

• Preserving materials. Scanning photos, digitizing video tapes, recording a person’s stories while they are alive, backing up messages. Nothing is invented here: you keep what exists.
• Restoring photos and sound. Removing scratches, sharpening, colorizing a black-and-white photo, cleaning noise from an old recording. Here AI already partly fills in details, but the basis is real.
• Animating photos and synthesizing a voice. A short video in which a face from a photo moves and smiles, or a voice that says new words. Here the result is largely generated: the movements and words never existed.
• A conversational copy or “digital twin”. A chatbot, avatar or voice bot that answers “on behalf of” a person. Researchers call such systems deadbots or griefbots. It is a simulation, not the person and not their memory.

The first two levels mostly do not raise ethical disputes, as long as privacy is respected. The third and fourth require much more care, which is what the rest of this article is about.

Why people turn to this and what research says

Wanting to hear your mother’s voice once more or see your grandfather’s smile is understandable. People have always looked for ways to keep a connection with those they loved: memories, rituals, inner dialogue. AI offers new, technological forms of such a connection.

What people see as benefits

In a 2026 qualitative study in Frontiers in Digital Health, the authors interviewed 25 adults in China, most of whom had experienced bereavement, about their attitudes to griefbots (Lu et al., 2026). Participants named these possible benefits:

• emotional comfort and a sense that the connection has not been completely broken, especially after a sudden loss;
• symbolic closure: a chance to “say” what they did not manage to say, to say goodbye, to apologize.

What people see as risks

The same participants also named risks:

• disruption of natural grieving and a conflict with the understanding that death is final;
• inauthenticity: the bot is not the person, and its words may distort their image;
• dependency and worse everyday functioning and relationships with living people;
• psychological harm and prolonged grief;
• unequal access because of cost, and a risk of fraud against less informed families;
• use of a person’s data without their consent.

The authors concluded that, in participants’ view, such systems are “neither inherently beneficial nor inherently harmful”. Both the comfort and the risk come from the same property: the ability to imitate a person’s presence. According to participants, acceptability depends on the situation, the person’s readiness and their vulnerability.

What we do not know yet

An important limitation: participants in this study reasoned about imagined use, not about months of experience with real services. There are very few long-term studies showing how such services affect grief years later. So the honest answer to “does it help or harm?” is, for now: it differs from person to person, and science lacks data.

Palliative care and bereavement specialists quoted by Hospice News also speak of a new complexity (Hospice News, 2026). They point to the risk of blurring the boundary between memory and presence, to confusion about what is real when someone is vulnerable, and to the need for the person’s explicit consent while they are alive. As one of the specialists’ comments puts it: “It is important to maintain balance.”

The industry is growing nonetheless. According to an estimate cited by the same outlet, the “digital afterlife” market was about 22 billion dollars in 2024 and may reach about 80 billion by 2034. This is a forecast from one research publication, not precise data, so treat it with caution.

Restoring old photos and videos

This is the calmest and most common way to use AI for remembrance. The aim is to preserve and improve what already exists.

What you can do

• Scan. Phone apps such as PhotoScan or Photomyne remove glare, crop and straighten prints. For valuable photos, a flatbed scanner is a better choice.
• Remove damage and sharpen. Services such as MyHeritage Photo Enhancer, Remini, Let's Enhance, VanceAI, Topaz Labs or the free open-source Upscayl increase resolution and sharpness, and some of them work specifically on faces.
• Colorize. MyHeritage In Color, Palette.fm and others add color to black-and-white photos.
• Refine by hand. In Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom or Fotor you can adjust the result or restore a photo without “filling in” details.

Limitations to know about

AI does not know what the person really looked like. When a model “restores” a blurry face, it fills in fine features based on patterns from other faces. Because of this, the shape of the eyes, wrinkles, moles or the smile may change. Sometimes relatives do not recognize the person in an “enhanced” photo.

The same goes for color: the model estimates what color a dress, eyes or hair might have been. It does not know the real colors.

How to check the result

• Compare with the original side by side, not only from memory.
• Show the result to people who knew the person well. If the features have changed, try a lighter level of processing or another tool.
• For portraits, start with minimal settings: less “enhancement” often means more likeness.

How to keep the original

• Never replace the original scan with the processed one. Keep both under different names, for example “grandma_1975_original” and “grandma_1975_AI”.
• Scan at maximum quality and keep files in at least two places: on a home drive and in the cloud.
• Label processed photos, for example “restored with AI”, so that years later nobody mistakes them for the original.
• Before uploading family photos to an online service, read how it stores and deletes files and whether it uses them to train models.

Animating photos: when a face “moves”

Tools such as MyHeritage Deep Nostalgia turn a portrait into a short video: the person turns their head, blinks, smiles. MyHeritage LiveMemory and general video generators (D-ID, Hedra, HeyGen, Runway, Kling AI, Pika, Luma Dream Machine, Hailuo AI, Google Veo, Vidu) can “bring to life” a whole scene from a picture.

How it works

The model analyzes the face in the photo and applies motion learned from thousands of other videos. So the motion is generic: it does not show how this particular person turned, laughed or blinked. Scene generators invent even more: everything outside the frame and everything that would happen next.

What to expect

The result may be moving, or it may seem strange. Sometimes an “animated” face looks slightly unnatural, and that feeling is unsettling. People react very differently:

• some are glad to see a familiar face in motion, and it brings back warm memories;
• for others it is disturbing or painful, especially soon after a loss;
• within a family these reactions can differ: what touched a granddaughter may upset a widow.

Tips for sharing

• Ask your family first. Do not send an “animated” photo unexpectedly, especially to people in acute grief.
• Label it as re-created by AI. This is honest towards viewers and helps, over time, not to confuse the simulation with a real recording.
• Do not publish without relatives’ consent. In Ukraine, a photo of a person can be publicly shown and distributed after their death only with the consent of their close relatives (more in the section on the law).
• Do not use it at a funeral without discussing it. What is appropriate within the family may be inappropriate at a public ceremony.

Voice: preserve, restore, clone

For many people, the voice is the most alive part of memory. Here, too, it is worth distinguishing three things.

Preserving recordings

The most valuable things are real recordings: voice messages, videos from family celebrations, answering machine messages, audio cassettes. Move them from messengers and old phones into ordinary files and back them up. Voice messages in messengers may disappear along with an account or a phone.

If the person is alive, the best gift to the future is to record their stories. StoryCorps App helps you prepare questions and record a conversation for free, while Remento and Storyworth send the person weekly questions and turn the answers into a memoir book. There is no simulation here: the real voice and real words are kept.

Restoring quality

Old recordings often hiss, crackle or sound muffled. Tools such as Adobe Podcast, Auphonic, Krisp, LALAL.AI (separates the voice from music and noise), Descript or the free Audacity can make a voice clearer. As with photos, keep the original file: aggressive cleaning can change the timbre.

Voice cloning

Speech synthesis services (ElevenLabs, Resemble AI, Respeecher, Murf AI, Speechify, Descript and others) can build a voice model from samples and “read” any text with it. Technically this means the voice can say things the person never said.

So consent is the key here. Serious services spell it out in their rules. Here is what we found in their documents:

• ElevenLabs prohibits in its usage policy cloning the voice of any living person without their explicit and informed consent, and the voice of a deceased person in a way that may cause harm or infringe post-mortem rights. It also prohibits using voice recordings of anyone under 18 and circumventing voice verification systems.
• Resemble AI states that it required explicit consent and speaker verification before creating a clone.
• Respeecher works on professional projects and states that any voice replication requires explicit permission secured through a mutually signed agreement.
• For other services, check the terms yourself: rules differ and change.

The best form of consent is when the person decided during their lifetime whether their voice may be re-created, and for what. If there is no such decision, it is worth at least discussing it with all the close relatives, because the voice belongs to the memory of the whole family.

Protecting yourself from scam calls

The same technology helps scammers. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) warns of a scheme in which fraudsters clone a relative’s voice from a short clip on social media and call family members, supposedly in an emergency, asking for money to be transferred (FTC). What you can do:

• do not trust the voice itself: check whether the emergency is real and whether it really is your relative by calling them back on a number you know;
• be wary when someone asks for a wire transfer, cryptocurrency or gift cards and rushes you;
• agree on a family “code word” for real emergencies;
• be more careful about publishing long videos and audio with your loved ones’ voices publicly.

Digital twins and conversational copies

This is the most sensitive part of the topic. Services here are very different, and the difference matters.

Two fundamentally different approaches

Researchers in Philosophy & Technology distinguish two types of “conversational” systems (Kozlovski et al., 2026):

• Retrieving recorded answers. During their lifetime, a person answers hundreds of questions on video or audio. The system then picks the recorded answer closest to a question. The authors describe such systems as ones that “feel interactive but are essentially retrieval-driven, not free-form”. An example of this approach is StoryFile. The advantage: every word really was said by the person.
• Generating new replies. A language model receives messages, texts and descriptions of character and writes new replies “in the style” of the person. Examples are Project December or You, Only Virtual. The risk: the model may answer the same question differently and make things up, that is, “hallucinate”.

The risk of invented “words”

A generative copy can say what the person would never have said: give advice they would not agree with, “remember” an event that never happened, express a view opposite to their beliefs. For someone in grief such words can weigh a lot, because they sound like “mom’s voice”. That is why the cards of such services in our catalog carry a separate warning: this is a simulation, and it may say things the person never said.

Attachment and commercial incentives

Conversational services are a business. Subscriptions, payment by credits or minutes, and extra charges for voice or video create an incentive for the user to come back as often as possible. In a 2024 paper, University of Cambridge researchers described a hypothetical scenario in which the bot of a deceased grandmother starts inserting advertisements into its replies after the free trial ends, and the granddaughter feels that her grandmother’s image is being exploited (Hollanek, Nowaczyk-Basińska, 2024). It is an invented example, but it shows well why it matters to know how a service makes money.

What happens to the copy if the company disappears

A digital copy lives on a company’s servers. If the company shuts down, goes bankrupt or changes direction, the recordings may disappear with it. Several examples confirmed at the time of checking:

• HereAfter AI, a life-story interview service with an answer “avatar”: the main site hereafter.ai does not open (404 error). According to reports from other sources, the company announced its closure in summer 2026, and recordings can only be obtained by request by email. We did not find an official statement with details.
• StoryFile filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US in 2024. Today the company mainly sells its platform to museums and institutions, and there is no consumer app on its website.
• Eternos, a digital legacy service, became Uare.ai in 2025 according to press reports and now focuses on living professionals who create an AI version of themselves.
• Seance AI, an app for “farewell conversations”, is unavailable: the domain is parked.
• Play.ht, a speech synthesis and voice cloning service, is also unavailable: the domain does not open. According to reports from other sources, the service was closed at the end of 2025 together with users’ data.

The practical conclusion: if you do use such a service, find out whether you can export all the materials, and keep your own copies of recordings, letters and photos separately from the service.

Other services in this group

Some services create twins of living people with their consent: Uare.ai, Delphi (AI versions of experts), Tavus (a developer platform whose rules require the person’s explicit consent to a replica), Synthesia (video avatars). General-purpose companions such as Replika or Character.AI were not built as tools for remembering the dead; we mention them only because people sometimes use them this way. Replika states in its terms that it is available only from age 18 and is not psychological or medical care.

The effect on mental health

This section is the most important one. We do not give medical advice; we summarize what researchers write and what specialists say. Every person and every loss is unique.

Comfort and a symbolic connection

For some people, a photo that “moves” or even a short conversation with a simulation can become a symbolic gesture: a chance to say goodbye, to say what was left unsaid, to feel the warmth of memories. Participants in the Frontiers in Digital Health study saw possible comfort in this, especially after a sudden loss, when there was no time to say goodbye.

The risk of replacing grieving

Grief is often described as a process in which a person gradually accepts that a loved one is physically gone and builds a new, inner connection with them. A simulation that “answers” every day can slow this process down: it feels as if the person is somehow still here, so accepting the loss is harder. Study participants directly named the disruption of natural grieving among the main risks.

A sense of presence and a blurred boundary

The specialists quoted by Hospice News note that a simulation can blur the boundary between memory and presence. Memory is something you carry inside. A simulation is an external product that reacts and “lives” its own life. In a vulnerable state, it is easy to start perceiving it as the real person.

Dependency and isolation

A bot is available around the clock, never gets tired and is always “happy” to talk. Because of this, it is easy to start spending more and more time with it and less with living people. Study participants mentioned dependency and worse social functioning. A separate author in the Journal of Responsible Technology (Cheng, 2026) proposes designing such services to prevent dependency: limiting time and constantly reminding users that it is AI.

Distorted memories

If a simulation regularly “says” something new, there is a risk that over time those words will weave themselves into memories. After a few years it can be hard to tell what mom really said and what the bot “said”. Study participants mentioned the risk of inauthenticity and a distorted image of the deceased.

Prolonged grief

Study participants feared that simulations could prolong grief. If you notice that months pass and the pain does not ease and gets in the way of work, relationships or taking care of yourself, it is a reason to see a specialist.

Particular vulnerability

• Children and teenagers. The Cambridge researchers recommend giving access to services that “re-create” the dead only to adults. They note that no such service can prove that children interacting with bots is not harmful. If a child has experienced a loss, talk with them and involve a child psychologist, not a “virtual mom”.
• Sudden and traumatic losses. Death in war, an accident, the suicide of a loved one, a person going missing. Here grief is often combined with trauma, and a simulation can touch very painful feelings. In such cases a specialist’s support is especially important.
• Loneliness and a tendency to dependency. If a person has lived in isolation for a long time or has experienced dependence on games, social media or virtual relationships, the risk of getting “stuck” in conversations with a bot is higher.

Red flags

Here are signs worth taking seriously, in yourself or in someone close:

• hours every day in conversations with a bot, or ever longer sessions;
• avoiding living people, friends and family for the sake of talking to the simulation;
• believing that it really is that person, or that they have “moved” into the program;
• worse sleep or mood, or stronger pain after sessions;
• being unable to stop even when you want to;
• life decisions made “on the advice” of the bot;
• large spending on subscriptions and extras that is hard to afford.

What to do. Take a break for a few days and see how you feel. Tell someone you trust about it. Talk to a psychologist, a psychotherapist or your family doctor. If you have thoughts of harming yourself or of “following” the person who died, contact the emergency services or a support line immediately (contacts below).

Ideas for “safer” use from research

These are not medical instructions but ideas proposed by researchers and specialists:

• A limited format. One or a few sessions with a clear purpose (for example, to say goodbye), not a constant “companion”.
• Involving loved ones. Doing it together with someone, not alone at night.
• Paying attention to your reaction. After a session, ask yourself: do I feel better or worse?
• Being ready to stop. Decide in advance when and how you will finish and what you will do with the data.
• Not a substitute for therapy. The authors of guidelines in the Journal of Responsible Technology (Betancur Franco et al., 2026) consider AI in grief only as a possible complement to therapy, with professional oversight and restrictions by age and the person’s condition.

Ethics and consent

Who has the right to create a copy

The simplest ethical rule: a digital copy of a person is created only with their consent. Best of all is when the person decided during their lifetime whether they want their voice, face or way of speaking to be re-created, for whom and for how long. If the person left nothing and those close to them do not know their wishes, we believe it is better to refrain.

Consent is needed not only from the deceased. The Cambridge researchers propose a principle of mutual consent: taking into account both the wishes of the person whose data are used and the wishes of those who will interact with the copy. For example, a son may want a bot of his father, while his mother is firmly against it. It is especially delicate when a copy is created as a “gift”: the person receiving it may not be ready for it.

What to expect from services

The researchers’ recommendations (Hollanek and Nowaczyk-Basińska, 2024; Cheng, 2026) can be summed up in a few principles:

• Transparency. It is always clear that this is AI, and the risks are explained before the conversation begins.
• Adults only. Age restrictions on access to the “re-creation” of the dead.
• The right to leave. You can stop at any time, without reminders and “lures” to come back.
• A dignified ending. A procedure for “retiring” the copy when it is no longer used, with respect for the person’s memory.
• No ads or sales in the conversation. A loved one’s voice should not advertise products.
• Data protection. It is clear who stores the messages, recordings and photos, who has access to them and how to delete them.

Law and privacy

We are not lawyers, and this section is not legal advice. Below is an overview of what we were able to confirm as of 23 October 2026. For a specific situation, consult a lawyer.

We did not find a dedicated law on “deadbots”

Neither in Ukraine, nor in the EU, nor in the US were we able to find a separate law specifically on chatbots or avatars of the dead. But several general rules already apply to this topic.

Ukraine

The Civil Code of Ukraine (Articles 303 and 308) provides that after a person’s death, their personal papers (documents, photographs, diaries, letters) and photographs depicting them may be used and publicly distributed only with the consent of their children, widow or widower, and if there are none, their parents, brothers and sisters (text of the code). How these rules will be applied to AI copies is for lawyers and courts to decide, but the logic is clear: public “animated” photos or copies made without the consent of close relatives may violate their rights.

European Union

• GDPR does not apply to the data of deceased persons, but EU member states may set their own rules (recital 27). At the same time, a deceased person’s messages almost always contain the personal data of living people: friends, relatives, colleagues. By uploading them to a service, you also hand over their data.
• The AI Act (Article 50) requires, from 2 August 2026, that people know they are interacting with AI, that synthetic content is marked and that deepfakes are disclosed as artificially generated (Article 50).

United States

• In Tennessee, the ELVIS Act has been in force since 2024 and protects a person’s voice as part of their rights to their likeness, including against AI imitation.
• In California, since 2025, law AB 1836 prohibits using digital replicas of the voice or likeness of deceased performers in audiovisual works and sound recordings without the consent of their rights holders (usually their heirs).
• The federal NO FAKES Act on rights to digital replicas had not been passed as of October 2026.

Platform rules

Service rules are often stricter than the law. As we have seen, some explicitly prohibit cloning a voice without consent, using children’s voices or circumventing verification. Breaking the rules can lead to the account being blocked and the data deleted.

In practice: if you have decided to try anyway

This checklist does not encourage using these services; it helps reduce risks if the decision has already been made.

• Consent. Did the person express their wishes while alive? Do close relatives agree?
• Purpose. What exactly do you want: to restore a photo, hear a voice, say goodbye? The more specific the purpose, the easier it is to stop in time.
• Originals. Keep all original photos, recordings and letters separately and never replace them with processed versions.
• Backups. At least two copies in different places, and printed photos for the most precious ones.
• Terms of service. Read who owns the uploaded data, whether it is used to train models, and how to export and delete it.
• Deletion. Check whether you can delete the copy and all materials, and what will happen to them if the account or the company closes.
• Time limits. Decide in advance how much time and how often you will use the service.
• Support from people. Tell someone close what you are doing and ask them to pay attention to changes in your mood.
• Labeling. Label everything generated as re-created by AI, especially if you show it to others.
• An exit plan. Decide when and how you will finish, for example after a certain date or a specific event, and what you will do with the data.

Digital legacy: take care in advance

A separate and very practical topic is what will happen to your accounts, photos and messages. You can take care of this during your lifetime, and it will make things easier for your family.

• Google. Inactive Account Manager lets you choose an inactivity period, up to 10 trusted people and the data they will be able to download, or set the account to be deleted (Google Help). Without such a plan, Google may delete an account that has been inactive for at least two years.
• Apple. A Legacy Contact receives an access key; after the owner’s death, with the key and a death certificate, they can get photos, messages, notes and files, but not passwords from iCloud Keychain or purchased movies and music (Apple Support).
• Facebook. You can choose a legacy contact for a memorialized profile in advance, or indicate that the account should be deleted after death. According to Meta’s announcement, a legacy contact cannot log in to the account or read private messages (Meta). Check Meta’s Help Center for current terms.

What else you can do:

• Regularly back up photos and important conversations into files that do not depend on a single service.
• Create a separate “memory” folder with the most important photos, voice recordings and videos, with labeled files.
• Leave your loved ones a letter or document listing important accounts and your wishes about them, including whether you allow digital copies of yourself. Store passwords securely, for example in a password manager with an emergency access feature.
• If you research your family history, MyHeritage and FamilySearch help keep a family tree and history. Before uploading DNA and relatives’ data, read the privacy policy.

Alternatives without AI

Many ways of keeping a connection with loved ones need no technology at all. They are often gentler and safer.

• A letter to the person who died. Write what you did not manage to say. You can keep it, read it at the grave or burn it.
• A memory book. Ask relatives and friends to write down stories about the person. The result is a portrait from many points of view.
• A photo album. An ordinary printed album with captions saying who, where and when.
• Rituals. Days of remembrance, the person’s favorite dish on a holiday, a walk along their favorite route, a candle.
• Support groups. Talking with people who have experienced a similar loss.
• Psychotherapy. A specialist who works with grief can help you go through the loss at a pace that is safe for you.

Technology can complement these things, for example by helping to make a memorial video or organize photos, but it does not replace them.

Overview of tools by group

Below are groups of tools from our catalog related to this topic. This is not a ranking or a recommendation: the order is arbitrary. Before using any service, read its terms, especially regarding consent, storage and deletion of data. All the tools are collected in the “Digital memory and legacy” subcategory.

Preserving stories during a person’s lifetime

• StoryCorps App — a free app from a nonprofit for recording an interview-style conversation.
• Remento — weekly questions and a memoir book with QR codes to voice recordings.
• Storyworth — weekly questions and a book, with answers in writing or by voice.
• MyHeritage, FamilySearch — family trees and historical records.

Scanning and restoring photos

• PhotoScan, Photomyne — scanning printed photos with a phone.
• MyHeritage Photo Enhancer, Remini, Let's Enhance, VanceAI, Topaz Labs, Upscayl, Hotpot.ai — sharpening and restoration.
• MyHeritage In Color, Palette.fm — colorization.
• Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, Fotor — manual editing.

Animating photos and video

• MyHeritage Deep Nostalgia, MyHeritage LiveMemory — animating faces and scenes from family photos.
• D-ID, Hedra, HeyGen — talking avatars from photos.
• Runway, Kling AI, Pika, Luma Dream Machine, Hailuo AI, Google Veo, Vidu — video generation from images.

Voice and audio

• Adobe Podcast, Auphonic, Krisp, LALAL.AI, Audacity, Descript — cleaning and restoring recordings.
• ElevenLabs, Resemble AI, Respeecher, Murf AI, Speechify — speech synthesis and voice cloning; consent rules differ, so check them.

Memorial videos, music and texts

• Canva, CapCut, Filmora, DaVinci Resolve, Kapwing, Animoto — videos and slideshows from photos.
• Suno — music generation.
• ChatGPT, Claude — help with the text of a eulogy or captions for an album. Remember that the most precious words are your own.

Digital legacy

• Google Inactive Account Manager, Apple Legacy Contact, Facebook Legacy Contact — what happens to accounts after death.

Conversational copies and twins (with particular care)

• StoryFile — answers from videos recorded during a person’s lifetime.
• Project December, You, Only Virtual — generative simulations.
• Uare.ai, Delphi, Tavus, Synthesia — twins and avatars of living people with their consent.
• Replika, Character.AI — general-purpose companions not built for remembering the dead.

Where to find help

Grief is not an illness, and many people are helped by family, friends, their community or a religious community. But it is normal to turn to a specialist even when things are “just hard”.

General advice:

• Start with your family doctor, a psychologist or a psychotherapist. Say directly that you have experienced a loss.
• Look for a support group for bereaved people in your city or online.
• If you are abroad, find out the numbers of the emergency services and psychological support lines in your country.

In Ukraine (checked on official websites on 23 October 2026):

• 112 — the single emergency number; 103 — ambulance. In an acute crisis or a threat to life, call these numbers.
• 7333 — Lifeline Ukraine, a suicide prevention and psychological support line, around the clock.
• The “How are you?” platform — the national mental health program: self-help tips and contacts of institutions that provide help.

Frequently asked questions

Is it okay to “animate” photos of relatives who have died?

Technically, yes. Ethically, it is worth asking close relatives first and labeling the result as AI-generated. In Ukraine, such photos may be publicly distributed only with the consent of close relatives.

Does a “restored” photo look like the real person?

Not always. AI fills in facial details based on other people’s faces, so features may change. Compare with the original and keep it.

Can a chatbot really talk like my mother?

It can imitate the style of her messages, but it is a simulation. A generative bot can “say” things she never said and answer the same question differently.

Do such services help people cope with grief?

There is little data. For some people it may be a symbolic comfort, for others a reason to get stuck in grief. Researchers stress that it all depends on the person and the situation.

Can children use such services?

Researchers advise restricting access to the “re-creation” of the dead to adults. A child who has experienced a loss needs living, close people and, if needed, a child psychologist.

Is consent needed to clone the voice of someone who has died?

Responsible services require the voice owner’s consent or prohibit cloning that infringes post-mortem rights. Best of all is when the person expressed their wishes during their lifetime and close relatives do not object.

What happens to the copy if the company closes?

The recordings may disappear. There are already examples (HereAfter AI, Play.ht). Keep originals and copies separately from the service and find out whether you can export the data.

How can I protect myself from scammers who fake relatives’ voices?

Do not trust the voice itself, call the person back on a number you know, be careful with urgent requests for money and agree on a family code word.

How do I take care of my digital legacy?

Set up the legacy features in Google, Apple and Facebook, make backups, and leave your loved ones a list of accounts and your wishes regarding digital copies.

What should I do if I feel worse after talking to a bot?

Take a break, talk to people close to you and see a specialist. If you have thoughts of harming yourself, call the emergency services (in Ukraine: 112, 103 or 7333).

Summary

AI can be a good helper for remembrance when it preserves and restores: scans photos, cleans up a voice recording, helps put together an album or a memorial video, records a person’s stories while they are still with us. The more AI re-creates instead of the person, the more careful you should be: questions of consent, truth, dependency and commercial interests arise.

The most important thing is to remember that a simulation is not the person, and technology does not replace grieving, the support of loved ones and the help of specialists. If you are unsure whether to try, choose the simpler and quieter path: original photos, real recordings, a letter, a conversation with those who also remember.

Facts checked on 23 October 2026. This material is for information only and is not medical, psychological or legal advice.