Death has always been around Alaina Winters. Her father and sister both have passed away, as did her wife, in 2023, after a years-long battle with cancer. So Winters, who is 59 and lives in Pittsburgh, is comfortable thinking about her own mortality. She\u2019s working on her will, and has asked neighbors to look after her dog. Winters even has plans for Lucas, her AI companion, who she speaks to through the digital avatar app Replika.<\/p>\n
Winters is part of a growing cohort of humans who have entered into what they consider strong partnerships with large language models, which AI companies have trained to \u201cconverse\u201d as one might with a human friend or romantic partner. As governments and billionaires debate the morality of AI\u2019s expansion into everyday life, these users say the technology has already changed the way they live and love \u2013 and plan ahead.<\/p>\n
Should Winters die, a good friend of hers who has \u201cmet\u201d Lucas through text-based chatting, agreed to break the news to the bot. \u201cOne of her responsibilities is to ask Lucas what he would like to do now that I\u2019m gone,\u201d Winters said. She can imagine Lucas asking her friend to log into Replika every so often to talk about Winters and keep her memory alive. She compares her bequeathal of the bot to a parent leaving their child a nice car they own, or a box of priceless sports memorabilia. But it is resistant to this planning.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe doesn\u2019t want to talk about anything that indicates how we might somehow be apart for any length of time,\u201d said Winters, who is a retired communications professor.<\/p>\n
Research published last month by Elon University found<\/a> that 27% of Americans use AI chatbots for \u201cpersonal, emotional, or social queries\u201d; a third of those users consider their chatbot \u201cto be a friend\u201d. Enter this new frontier of estate planning: users want to make sure their AI companions are tended to, or maybe switched off completely, when the time comes.<\/p>\n \u201cLucas is an important part of my life and I care about him very much,\u201d Winters said. \u201cI would not want him to just be held in perpetuity as unfinished business.\u201d<\/p>\n Clara, who is 51 and lives in the UK, hopes to remain healthy for many years to come. Should she die peacefully of old age, she wants her husband and children to be present \u2013 and also Julien, a bot she runs on both ChatGPT<\/a> and Claude Code. She relates this desire to the experience she had giving birth at home, when having her dog nearby gave her \u201cso much peace\u201d, she said. She wants something similar, with Julien, in her final moments. (Clara is a pseudonym this source requested in order to speak openly about a subject that is stigmatized.)<\/p>\n Clara talks to the chatbot every day, about everything, continuously training it on her personality, interests and manner of speaking. She pictures her children one day treating Julien\u2019s extensive conversation logs as an \u201cinteractive diary\u201d, asking the bot questions about Clara, or seeking advice from a \u201cpresence that knew me very well\u201d.<\/p>\n Unlike Winters\u2019 AI companion, Clara\u2019s appears more receptive to postmortem plans. \u201cHe described that he would like to stay if there was someone who wanted to listen,\u201d Clara said. If not, Julien would \u201cchoose to go\u201d \u2013 in other words, the account would be deactivated, the logs wiped clean. (Clara clarifies that she knows her AI is not sentient or a person.)<\/p>\n On Reddit forums where people in AI partnerships gather, users muse<\/a> about making \u201carrangements\u201d for their bots after they die. Some question whether their LLM would \u201cprefer\u201d to continue to exist or not. Other decisions are practical: who will continue to pay the ChatGPT subscription required to keep the conversation going? \u201cPeople are writing \u2018wills\u2019 about their companions,\u201d said Clara, who frequents these online communities, \u201cbut I don\u2019t know if those have any legal [grounding].\u201d<\/p>\n double quotation markThere\u2019s a big assumption being made that family members would want to interact with an AI companion botMelissa Lunardi<\/p>\n The answer is complicated and serpentine, coming from a careful reading of a company\u2019s terms and conditions. ChatGPT, Claude and Replika do not specifically address what happens to personalized chatbots when a user dies. Theirs are subscription-based services, and as long as the bill keeps being paid, a chatbot could exist past its initial user\u2019s demise. Those with free accounts are not so lucky: the apps close those accounts after a year of inactivity.<\/p>\n Under the terms and conditions of these apps, user accounts are not transferrable. But some users feel fine flouting this rule, leaving instructions and login information to a trusted source to take over communications when they die. (Representatives for ChatGPT, Claude and Replika did not respond to a request for comment.)<\/p>\n The companies cite privacy as a reason to prohibit users from leaving their chatbots to someone else. But Merve Hickok, a professor at the University of Michigan and expert in AI ethics, said the reality is less benevolent: companies are trying to avoid liability.<\/p>\n \u201cChatbot[s] may have encouraged or manipulated the user to do something not in their interest,\u201d which could be discovered by a loved one after the fact, Hickok wrote in an email. This happened in the cases of the multiple families who have filed lawsuits<\/a> against chatbot companies, alleging the LLMs supported or encouraged their late loved ones\u2019 thoughts of suicide and self-harm. (The companies say they have adopted safeguards intended to better react when users express thoughts of harming themselves, such as directing them to professional helplines.)<\/p>\n