Meta Patents AI to Keep Your Social Media Alive After You Die

Meta's Digital Afterlife Patent

Meta has been granted a patent for artificial intelligence technology designed to keep social media accounts active after users pass away. The patent, approved in late December 2025 and first filed in 2023, describes a system that would train a large language model on a deceased user's historical posts, comments, likes, and interactions to create a digital stand-in capable of simulating their online behaviour.

What the Technology Could Do

According to the patent filing, the AI system would go far beyond simply maintaining a memorial page. The digital clone could actively respond to other people's content by liking and commenting, reply to direct messages, and even simulate audio or video calls with other users on platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The patent was authored by Andrew Bosworth, Meta's chief technology officer.

The filing explains its rationale by noting that the impact on users is far more severe when someone is deceased and can never return to the platform. For content creators and influencers who depend on consistent engagement, the system could also maintain their accounts during extended breaks.

Ethical Storm

Legal and ethics scholars have raised serious concerns about the implications. Edina Harbinja, a professor at the University of Birmingham's Law School specialising in digital rights and post-mortem privacy, highlighted that the patent raises legal, social, ethical, and deeply philosophical issues. She also pointed to Meta's potential business incentives, noting the technology would generate more engagement, more content, and more data for current and future AI training.

Questions about consent, identity, and the commercialisation of memory have emerged in academic discourse, with research noting that the creation of digital clones often involves personal data without explicit consent from the deceased.

Industry Context

Meta has stated it has no plans to move forward with the technology. However, the patent sits within a growing grief tech industry, with companies like StoryFile and HereAfter AI already offering tools to interact with digital versions of deceased loved ones. Microsoft received a similar patent in 2021 for an AI chatbot simulating deceased individuals, but the project was deemed too disturbing for production.