Meta was recently granted a patent in Dec, 2025 that will allow the social media platform to post the name of a dormant user—whether they are resting on social media or long dead. The patent, first filed in 2023, describes a large language model that “simulates” a user’s social media activity, using a user’s comments, likes, or content to respond to other users and also refers to technology that simulates video or audio calls to users.

AI is used to bring the dead back to life, via text, SPEECHor video is not new, but the technology described in the patent has the added dynamic of using a deceased user’s existing account full of posts and photos among other content to continue interacting with other users, which ultimately drives engagement on Meta platforms. Meta’s Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth noted in the patent that account inactivity (such as that of a deceased person) can affect the experiences of other users, and the impact of inactivity is “more severe and permanent” when a user dies, he wrote. Experts say this reasoning is a new way to justify bringing users’ content back to life.

“It’s a very interesting shift because it suggests that the death of the user is like a negotiation problem.” Elaine Kasket, a cyberpsychologist, said luckwhich describes how he interpreted the patent. He’s been studying digital afterlives for 21 years—long before social media or AI became a part of everyday life—and what happens to our data after we’re gone.

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

Currently, Facebook and Instagram allow users to delete or “memorialize” the accounts of their loved ones, targeting a deceased user’s profile with the label “Remembering” and blocking anyone from logging in.

Distracts grief

Meta is not the first Big Tech company to patent a model to keep the former alive going online. Before the AI ​​era began, Microsoft filed a patent in 2017 for a method of creating a chatbot based on a person’s “social data,” including pictures, social media posts, messages, voice data and written letters.

Microsoft’s Tim O’Brien, who previously ran the company’s AI programs, called the technology “disturbing” after the company Office has partnered they have no plans to develop the technology.

In the years since Microsoft was granted the patent, products that offer to recreate the likeness of the dead have moved from a novelty to services. people use every day.

“It’s an uncomfortable and not very psychologically-helpful turn toward (a) technological solution to all kinds of difficult human emotions,” Kasket said. “You hear some founders say, ‘Oh, we want to solve grief in 10 years,’ which I think is a ridiculous idea.”

Grief is “very unique,” he explained, adding that different mourners may have very different reactions to the same profile developed from the digital remains.

Kasket said technologies like the one described in a patent weaken the shutdown. Sherry Turkle, a sociologist, psychologist, and founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology, agrees, adding that while this may seem like a small proposal, larger efforts are on the horizon.

“Technology is often used in rituals designed to make death bearable,” Turkle said luck in an email. Photography was originally envisioned as a way to capture faces at the moment of death, he explained, and recording was similarly envisioned to capture a person’s last words. Meta’s plans build on ideas but disrupt the grief process, he wrote. The ability to apologize to the dead or tell them you love them or think about them, allows people to mourn, grow, and change, he added.

“Now, in Meta’s plan, we deny death to participate in an endless fantasy life. The seance does not have to end,” he wrote.