How grief tech is reimagining Victorian spiritualism

Victorian spiritualists promised reunion with the dead through séances and spirit photography — a comfort born from Civil War losses and the elaborate mourning culture of the 1800s. Today's grief tech companies offer remarkably similar services: chatbots, phone calls, and VR experiences recreating deceased loved ones, priced from twenty dollars a month to fifteen thousand dollars for custom systems. The Conversation UK explores the troubling parallels: consent issues, financial exploitation of grieving users, and subscription traps that impose a second loss if you stop paying. These concerns aren't new. When spiritualism peaked, skeptics like Harry Houdini spent years exposing how mediums manipulated and exploited the bereaved. Modern AI grief tech, though, presents a novel problem: systems are proliferating without data on their long-term psychological impact. The article argues we should pause and demand answers on ethics and outcomes before treating AI resurrection as a standard path through grief.

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