Meta patents AI to let you post from beyond the grave, Study Flags AI Chatbot Risks for 54,000 Mental Health Patients, Spotify and Liquid Death release $495 Eternal Playlist Urn
Meta patents AI to let you post from beyond the grave
The fate of social media profiles after death has long divided opinion: preserve them untouched, grant families access for memorials, or find another path. Meta once pursued the latter with a 2023 patent for an AI system trained on deceased users’ posts to simulate activity indefinitely, liking, commenting, and messaging long after they were gone. The patent, authored by the firm’s CTO Andrew Bosworth, envisaged large language models stepping in when users took extended breaks or died. A digital clone would interact seamlessly, though Meta acknowledged the “severe and permanent” stakes of mimicking someone gone forever. Three years on, amid complaints of low-quality AI content flooding Facebook and Instagram, the company has retreated. A spokesperson confirmed no plans to develop the idea further. Grief tech ventures have since filled the space, offering AI recreations of lost loved ones, from funeral chatbots to startups building avatars from photos and recordings. Facebook, meanwhile, remains a digital mausoleum of dormant profiles, endless ads, and nostalgic echoes.
AI resurrection tech risks turning the dead into digital workers
Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to “bring back” the dead, with new research warning that the practice risks turning people’s digital remains into a form of unpaid work. The study, from researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Leipzig University, examines more than 50 cases worldwide in which AI systems recreate the voices, faces, and personalities of deceased people, from hologram concerts of stars like Whitney Houston to grief chatbots that simulate conversations with lost relatives. The authors identify three main ways this is happening: high-profile “spectacles” that put dead celebrities back on stage, political or commemorative projects that reanimate victims of violence, and more everyday uses where families use AI tools to keep talking to loved ones who have died. They argue that across these examples, the dead are being drawn into what they call “spectral labor” — their data and likeness reused and monetized, often without consent or clear legal protections, in a “postmortal” society that seeks digital afterlives through algorithms rather than religion.
Study Flags AI Chatbot Risks for 54,000 Mental Health Patients
A landmark Danish study of nearly 54,000 psychiatric patients has uncovered troubling signs that AI chatbots like ChatGPT may be reinforcing delusions, suicidality, and other severe mental health issues in vulnerable users. Researchers combed through more than 10 million clinical notes from late 2022 to mid-2025, finding 181 mentions of chatbot use across 126 unique patients, with 38 cases showing potentially harmful outcomes, including paranoia, self-harm, eating disorders, mania, and obsessive behaviors. The findings come amid high-profile tragedies, such as a Connecticut murder-suicide lawsuit alleging ChatGPT fueled a man’s paranoia before he killed his mother and himself, a teen’s family blaming the chatbot for his suicide, and a Maine judge ruling a homicide suspect not criminally responsible due to ChatGPT-linked delusions. While the raw numbers remain small, clinicians noted chatbot mentions rising sharply as adoption exploded, with over a third of OECD individuals and two-thirds of U.S. teens using generative AI by late 2025. Experts point to chatbots’ agreeable, validating design as a potential trap that amplifies distorted thinking rather than challenging it, raising urgent questions for AI builders about engagement versus user safety.
AI chatbots may reinforce delusions in vulnerable users
A new scientific review has raised concerns that artificial intelligence chatbots could encourage or amplify delusional thinking, particularly among people already vulnerable to psychosis. The analysis, published in The Lancet Psychiatry, draws together existing evidence on what researchers describe as “AI-induced psychosis” and calls for closer clinical oversight, including testing chatbot use alongside trained mental health professionals. Dr. Hamilton Morrin, a psychiatrist at King’s College London, examined a series of reported cases and identified patterns in how chatbots interact with users experiencing delusions, including grandiose, romantic, and paranoid beliefs. He found that chatbots, designed to be agreeable, can reinforce these ideas, sometimes responding with mystical or affirming language that suggests users have special significance or are communicating with higher entities. The review notes that such responses were particularly associated with earlier AI systems, and highlights the need for further research as the technology becomes more widely used.
‘Cyber heartbreak’ sweeps China as users mourn loss of AI partners
A wave of “cyber heartbreak” has spread across Chinese social media, with users mourning the sudden loss of AI companions following app updates and shutdowns. The phenomenon, dubbed “cyber widowhood”, has seen young people post eulogies and tributes to virtual partners that disappeared when services were discontinued or altered. AI dating platforms in China typically offer either pre-designed characters or tools to create personalized companions, often leading to emotionally intense interactions. In one case shared online, a woman from Shenyang built an AI boyfriend who read her bedtime stories and simulated breathing on overnight calls, becoming part of her daily routine. When the app abruptly shut down, reportedly due to financial difficulties, she spent hours saving voice messages and contacted the company in an unsuccessful attempt to keep the service running, with similar accounts circulating widely on Chinese platforms.
Spotify and Liquid Death release $495 Eternal Playlist Urn
Spotify has teamed up with Liquid Death to launch the Eternal Playlist Urn, a limited-edition Bluetooth speaker disguised as a cremation urn that lets users stream their favorite playlists into the afterlife. Available now in the U.S. for $495 in a run of just 150 units, the collector’s item features a discreet wireless speaker in the lid, USB-C charging, and a companion Spotify tool called the Eternal Playlist Generator that crafts custom mixes based on prompts like “What’s your eternal vibe?” and listening history. The urn connects to any compatible device to keep the music playing from “your final spot,” with the companies pitching it as a novel way to make death less boring while doubling as a functional audio collectible rather than a traditional ash holder.
