StoryFile, Inc., an artificial intelligence company that marketed a service for creating interactive video conversations with deceased relatives, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on May 5, 2024. The case, number 24-22398, was filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. The filing came less than three years after the company promoted an AI recreation of actor William Shatner as its flagship demonstration.
HereAfter AI, another digital legacy company that built interactive memory profiles from recorded interviews, is now shutting down. Its homepage displays the message: "It's been an honor to help families record their memories for loved ones, but unfortunately HereAfter is shutting down." Users with existing accounts are instructed to email the company to request their recordings.
Two griefbot companies have failed or are failing within roughly 18 months. Both asked families to upload photographs, voice recordings, and interview content to build digital recreations of deceased relatives. Neither company's published terms disclosed what would happen to that material in the event of a shutdown or bankruptcy filing.
By the Numbers
What the companies charged while operating
Before its bankruptcy, StoryFile sold interactive video packages. Its pricing structure included $1 per individual question, $49 for Story Packs with 75 questions, and $499 for a premium package offering access to all 1,600 questions with unlimited conversations and 5-minute video responses, according to archived pricing references. Its Conversa business platform started at $49 per month.
HereAfter AI previously charged between $3.99 and $7.99 per month for its memory preservation app, with a 14-day free trial. The company is no longer accepting new subscriptions. Its shutdown notice does not specify how long recorded interviews will remain accessible to existing account holders or whether raw audio files will be returned.
Project December, a chatbot platform that simulates deceased people, charges roughly $10 for approximately 100 messages, according to reporting in *Nature*. You, Only Virtual charges $20 per month to build and converse with a virtual personality. Neither company publishes a shutdown, data retention, or bankruptcy contingency policy.
Afterlife AI, one of the newer entrants in the category, currently offers a free tier with 50 memories and no expiration, a Legacy tier at $14.99 per month, and an Eternal tier at $29.99 per month, according to its published pricing page. The company's terms do not specify what occurs with user data if the company ceases operations.
The StoryFile bankruptcy record
StoryFile, Inc. was founded in 2017 and developed a platform that turned recorded interviews into AI-powered conversational video. The company received press attention for its work with William Shatner, who part-owned the company and appeared in promotional materials as a conversational AI. Law360 reported the Chapter 11 filing on May 6, 2024. The bankruptcy court record lists the case as a voluntary petition under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.
Chapter 11 reorganization allows a company to continue operating while restructuring its debts, but it also permits the sale or liquidation of assets, including intellectual property and stored user data. Families who paid StoryFile for interactive video memorials have no public record indicating what happened to their recordings, voice models, or the proprietary software used to generate responses. The bankruptcy docket does not include a user data retention or return provision indexed under the case file.
A family that paid $499 for a StoryFile premium package has no documented mechanism for recovering the underlying interview footage if the reorganized company sells its assets, transfers its servers, or discontinues the service.
The regulatory vacuum
The FTC Funeral Rule governs how funeral providers disclose prices for funeral goods and services at the arrangement table. The rule does not cover AI-generated memorials, digital recreations of deceased persons, or subscription services that charge families to maintain a simulation. A "funeral provider," as defined in 16 CFR 453.1, is a party that sells funeral goods and services to the public. A griefbot company selling cloud-hosted AI subscriptions falls outside that definition.
No state requires consent from the deceased before an AI replica is created from uploaded material. No federal law governs who owns the resulting persona or the underlying training data. No regulation addresses what happens when the company hosting the recreation files for bankruptcy, gets acquired, or changes its terms of service.
The Wellbeing Sciences Review, a peer-reviewed journal, published research projecting the digital-afterlife industry will grow from approximately $22 billion in 2024 to $80 billion by 2034. Hospice News reported the figures in April 2026. The growth projection assumes continued consumer adoption. It does not account for company failure rates, data loss events, or the absence of a regulatory framework for user data when a provider exits the market.
Why the shutdown problem is the cost problem
The listed subscription price understates what a family actually pays. A griefbot is not a finished product. It is an ongoing relationship with a vendor that holds voice recordings, interview content, photographs, and the trained model that produces responses. If the vendor disappears, the recreation disappears with it. The hours a family spent recording interviews, curating photographs, and refining the persona become unrecoverable.
HereAfter AI's shutdown notice tells users to email support to request their recordings. It does not commit to a timeline, a format, or a guarantee that the request will be fulfilled. StoryFile's bankruptcy docket contains no user-facing data return provision.
For families, the financial loss extends beyond the subscription fees. A family that spent 20 hours recording interviews with an aging parent, paid $499 for the premium package, and expected the resulting interactive video to remain accessible to grandchildren has lost both the money and the underlying material if the company cannot or will not return it.
What no company publishes
Obitley reviewed the public-facing websites and published terms of five griefbot and digital legacy companies: Project December, You Only Virtual, Afterlife AI, HereAfter AI, and StoryFile. None of the five publishes a documented policy covering all of the following:
- What happens to user-uploaded voice recordings, photographs, and interview content if the company files for bankruptcy or ceases operations.
- Whether the company has a contractual obligation to return raw source material to paying users on request, and in what format.
- Whether user data can be sold, transferred, or licensed to a third party as part of a bankruptcy proceeding or acquisition.
- Whether the trained AI model built from a specific person's data is the property of the family, the company, or the estate of the deceased.
- A documented escrow or continuity arrangement that guarantees service access if the company goes offline.
The absence of these provisions is not a technical oversight. Subscription terms and bankruptcy filings are drafted by counsel. The choice not to address user data continuity in those documents is a choice about who bears the loss when the company fails.
What families can do before paying
Before uploading material to any digital afterlife platform, families should obtain specific commitments in writing and retain their own copies of all source material.
- Keep the original recordings. Voice memos, interview audio, and photographs should be stored on a local drive or cloud account the family controls. Do not rely solely on the griefbot platform as the only copy.
- Ask for the data export policy in writing before subscribing. If the company cannot produce one, treat the subscription as non-refundable and the uploaded material as potentially unrecoverable.
- Ask specifically about bankruptcy and acquisition contingencies. A company that has not drafted these provisions has not planned for the scenario its customers are most exposed to.
- Consider whether the same emotional goal can be met with a non-subscription format. A printed memory book, a private family video archive on a service the family controls, or recorded interviews stored on a personal device do not disappear when a vendor fails.
The griefbot industry is projected to triple in value over the next decade. Two companies in the category have already demonstrated what happens when the growth story stops. The families who paid them are the ones carrying the cost.
*Sources: StoryFile, Inc. Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, Case No. 24-22398, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, filed May 5, 2024; Law360, "Video AI Startup StoryFile Enters Bankruptcy," May 6, 2024; HereAfter AI homepage shutdown notice, accessed July 2026; Afterlife AI published pricing page, afterlife.ai/pricing, accessed July 2026; Hospice News, "AI Grief Bots Present 'New Complexities' in Bereavement Care," April 9, 2026, citing Wellbeing Sciences Review digital-afterlife industry projections; *Nature*, reporting on Project December per-message pricing; 16 CFR 453.1, FTC Funeral Rule definition of "funeral provider."*
Get investigations like this in your inbox
Free. Every Tuesday.