Want to live forever? Meta has patented an AI model that will keep your profile active after you die

dead It was recently granted a patent in December 2025 that would essentially allow a social media platform to post on behalf of an inactive user — whether they’ve taken a break from social media or long after they’ve passed away. The patent, which was first filed in 2023, describes a large linguistic model that “simulates” a user’s activity on social media, using a user’s comments, likes or content to respond to other users and also refers to technology that would simulate video or audio calls with users.

Using artificial intelligence to revive the dead via text messages letteror video This is nothing new, but the technology described in the patent has the added dynamic of using a deceased user’s existing account filled with posts and photos among other content to continue interacting with other users, ultimately increasing engagement on Meta platforms. Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief technology officer, noted in the patent that account inactivity (say a deceased person’s account) could impact other users’ experiences, and that the impact of inactivity “is more severe and lasting” when the user is deceased, he wrote. Experts say this rationale is a new way to justify bringing users’ content back to life.

“This is a really interesting shift because it suggests that user death is like a link problem.” Eileen Caskett, a cyberpsychologist, said: luckdescribing how the patent was interpreted. I’ve studied digital life after death for 21 years — long before social media or artificial intelligence became part of everyday life — and what happens to our data after we’re gone.

“We have no plans to move forward with this example,” a Meta spokesperson said. luck In a statement. While the patent does not mean that the company is actively pursuing this technology, Meta and Patent The spokesperson wrote that lead author, Bosworth, will continue to explore applications for large language models.

Currently, Facebook and Instagram allow users to remove or “memorialize” their loved ones’ accounts, which marks the deceased user’s profile with a “memorial” tag and prevents anyone from logging in.

Interruption of sadness

Meta isn’t the first big tech company to patent a model for keeping an ex alive still running online. Long before the era of artificial intelligence began, Microsoft It filed a patent in 2017 for a method of creating a chatbot based on a person’s “social data,” including photos, social media posts, messages, audio data, and written messages.

Microsoft’s Tim O’Brien, who previously ran the company’s AI programs, called the technology “annoying” After the company Announce They had no plans to develop the technology.

In the years since Microsoft obtained the patent, products offering re-creations of the likeness of the dead have gone from novelty to service People use it daily.

“It’s a very uncomfortable and psychologically unhelpful shift toward (a) technological solution to all kinds of difficult human emotions,” Caskett said. “You’ll hear some founders say, ‘Oh, we’d like to solve the grief problem in 10 years,’ which I think is a really ridiculous idea.”

She explained that grief is “very private,” and added that different griefers can have very different reactions to the same profile developed from digital remains.

Techniques like those described in the patent undermine the closure process, Casket said. Sherry Turkle, a sociologist, psychologist and founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology, agrees, adding that while this may seem like a small-scale proposal, there are large-scale efforts on the horizon.

“Technology has always been used in rituals intended to make death bearable,” Turkle said. luck In an email. She explained that photography was initially conceived as a way to capture faces at the moment of death, and recording was similarly conceived to capture someone’s last words. Meta’s plans are based on those ideas but interrupt the grieving process, she wrote. She added that being able to apologize to the dead or tell them you love them or are thinking about them allows people to grieve, grow and change.

“Now, in the Metta Plan, we deny death to participate in an imaginary eternal life. The séance must never end,” she wrote.