AI Avatars of the Dead Gain Ground in East Asia, Stirring Grief Ethics Debate

For several years, mourning across China, Japan and South Korea has increasingly entered the realm of artificial intelligence, with companies giving grieving families the option to interact with AI-generated likenesses of departed relatives. The phenomenon is often described as the "digital afterlife."

One provider is South Korea's DeepBrain AI, whose "re;memory" service assembles virtual twins from hours of video and audio recorded before a person's death. The avatars are pitched as a way to ask unanswered questions, hear a familiar voice or finally say a goodbye that was left unsaid.

The trend draws on the region's deeply rooted tradition of filial piety and appears to resonate with younger people who already move easily through digital spaces and are receptive to technology-driven mourning tools.

Psychologists, however, warn that repeated interaction with an AI avatar may disrupt the natural grieving process, keeping mourners tethered to the past rather than helping them move forward. That concern has fuelled a wider ethical discussion about whether conversing with a synthetic version of a lost relative prolongs denial or offers a new route to trauma recovery.