The Rise of Death Tech: How Technology Is Changing How We Die and Grieve
For years now, people have used AI for everyday tasks. From Youtube recommendations and customer service chatbots to email drafting and credit scoring, AI has been a big topic as it becomes more and more integrated into our daily lives. Much of the conversation has been around the effect on jobs, ethical and privacy concerns, and climate change.
One development of AI, however, has largely been flying under the radar - and that is its involvement in death tech. Marketed as a way to “stay connected” to those who have died, services like re;memory use AI to generate personalized videos of those who have passed, promising solace and healing. However, they also risk making us more death-avoidant, emotionally disconnected, and tech-dependent.
Grief is a deeply human experience involving every emotion we have access to; i.e. despair over the loss, relief from the release of dread, and guilt over feeling relieved. In other words, grief is a deeply embodied journey - messy and unpredictable. And we have known this for millennia, which is why cultures and religions all around the world created rituals to process grief - from the Tangi traditional funeral rite of the Māori people to Famadihana in Madagascar.
These practices have helped us process loss through presence, community support, and emotional expression. In contrast, death tech often pulls us away from these grounding experiences, offering simulated interactions that can feel hollow and leave us suspended in a state of artificial connection.
But grief is not a problem to be solved—it’s a journey of healing. And true healing doesn’t come from artificial reconnections; it comes from allowing ourselves to fully feel and move through the reality of loss. Technology will continue to evolve, but it will never replace the human need for authentic emotional presence. If we truly want to honor who and what we have lost, we must be willing to feel the absence - not fill it with algorithms.
By choosing to grieve actively, we reclaim our capacity to love, to remember, and to live fully in the face of loss.
