AI lets you 'talk' to dead relatives now. So why won't we talk about the afterlife?

The newest answer to death does not come from a church, synagogue, or mosque, but from software — and soon, perhaps, a subscription plan.

Earlier this month, the Associated Press reported on grieving families in South Korea using AI-generated videos to hear messages from deceased relatives. The technology is not yet a sustained conversation, though the direction is clear. Feed a system enough voice recordings, text messages, videos, and social media posts, and it will generate a chatbot or avatar that looks and sounds like someone you lost.