(The Atlantic) – You can buy an AI version of your lost loved one. But should you?

When Justin Harrison got the call in 2022 telling him that his mother would likely die within the day, he didn’t panic. He got on a plane to Singapore, where he was scheduled to present at a conference about his start-up, You, Only Virtual, a platform on which users can chat with AI versions of their dead loved ones, and which Justin believes can ultimately eliminate grief as a human experience. He learned about his mother’s death while flying over the Pacific.

“My presentation went from My mom has Stage 4 cancer and is going to die to Tuesday night, my mom died, which was a pretty wild pivot,” he told me. Otherwise, Justin said, very little in his life changed after his mother’s death. He did not plan a funeral; he did not feel the need to. He did not wake up crying, pinned to his bed under the weight of his grief. (Read More)