Tech bros have been wanting to become immortal for years. Until they get there, their fallback might be continuing to post nonsense on social media from the afterlife.
On December 30, 2025, Meta was granted US patent 12513102B2: Simulation of a user of a social networking system using a language model. It describes a system that trains an AI on a user’s posts, comments, chats, voice messages, and likes, then deploys a bot to respond to newsfeeds, DMs, and even simulated audio or video calls.
Filed in November 2023 by Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, it sounds innocuous enough. Perhaps some people would use it to post their political hot takes while they’re asleep.
Dig deeper, though, and the patent veers from absurd to creepy. It’s designed to be used not just from beyond the pillow but beyond the grave.
From the patent:
“The language model may be used for simulating the user when the user is absent from the social networking system, for example, when the user takes a long break or if the user is deceased.”
A Meta spokesperson told Business Insider that the company has no plans to act on the patent. And tech companies have a habit of laying claim to bizarre ideas that never materialize. But Facebook’s user numbers have stalled, and it presumably needs all the engagement it can get. We already know that the company loves the idea of AI ‘users’, having reportedly piloted them in late 2024, much to human users’ annoyance.
If the company ever did decide to pull the trigger on this technology, it would be a departure from its own memorialization policy, which preserves accounts without changes. One reason the company might not be willing to step over the line is that the world simply isn’t ready for AI conversations with the dead. Other companies have considered and even tested similar systems. Microsoft patented a chatbot that would allow you to talk to AI versions of deceased individuals in 2020; its own AI general manager called it disturbing, and it never went into production. Amazon demonstrated Alexa mimicking a dead grandmother’s voice from under a minute of audio in 2022, framing it as preserving memories. That never launched either.
Some projects that did ship left people wishing they hadn’t. Startup 2Wai’s avatar app originally offered the chance to preserve loved ones as AI avatars. Users called it “nightmare fuel” and “demonic”. The company seems to have pivoted to safer ground like social avatars and personal AI coaches now.
The legal minefield
The other thing holding Meta back could be the legal questions. Unsurprisingly for such a new idea, there isn’t a uniform US framework on the use of AI to represent the dead. Several states recognize post-mortem right of publicity, although states like New York limit that to people whose voices and images have commercial value (typically meaning celebrities). California’s AB 1836 specifically targets AI-generated impersonations of the deceased, though.
Meta would also need to tiptoe carefully around the law in Europe. The company had to pause AI training on European users in 2024 under regulatory pressure, but then launched it anyway in March last year. Then it refused to sign the EU’s GPAI Code of Practice last July (the only major AI firm to do so). Meta’s relationship with EU regulators is strained at best.
Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) excludes deceased persons’ data, but Article 85 of the French Data Protection law lets anyone leave instructions about the retention, deletion and communication of their personal data after death. The EU AI Act’s Article 50 (fully applicable this August) will also require AI systems to disclose they are AI, with penalties up to €15 million or 3% of worldwide turnover for companies that don’t comply.
Hopefully Meta really will file this in the “just because we can do it doesn’t mean we should” drawer, and leave erstwhile social media sharers to rest in peace.
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