Grief-AI market projected at $80B by 2034, clinicians wary

The market for grieving the dead through software is projected to reach $80 billion by 2034, up from roughly $22 billion in 2024, according to Hospice News.

The category has a working name now: griefbots. HereAfter.ai, You, Only Virtual (whose Versona Voice tool generates AI phone calls from deceased loved ones), StoryFile, and Eternos, which rebranded as Uare.ai in 2025, sell interactive avatars, voice clones, and chat replicas built from a person's texts, photos and recorded interviews.

Clinicians who work with bereaved families are cautious. "Technologies that simulate ongoing interaction with the deceased may complicate that process for some individuals," said Keely Rhiannon, lead grief counselor at Angela Hospice. Rebecca Feinglos, a certified grief support specialist and founder of Grieve Leave, put the timeline more plainly: "This is not a hypothetical future conversation; it's happening in living rooms and on phones right now."

Consent is the other unresolved piece. "There is the question of who has the right to create an AI version of someone who has passed," Feinglos said. StoryFile filed voluntarily for bankruptcy in 2024; Eternos has already rebranded once. The corporate churn does not stop the products from shipping. A YouTube video on the topic was passed around by two of the AI figures we track this week.