Project December, a chatbot platform that simulates deceased people through artificial intelligence, costs $10 to exchange approximately 100 messages with a bot, according to *Nature*. You, Only Virtual charges $20 per month to build and converse with a virtual personality. Replika offers free messaging but gates premium features behind subscriptions starting at roughly $70 per year.
The griefbot industry has a pricing problem that goes beyond what families pay. Every service operates on a different financial model. None of them disclose what happens to the digital recreation of a deceased person when the family stops paying. No regulator has issued guidance on the practice.
By the Numbers
What the services charge
The griefbot market splits into several pricing models, and each one creates a different risk for the family paying the bill.
Per-session pricing. Project December, created by programmer Jason Rohrer, charges per interaction. The service costs roughly $5 to $10 per session, with *Nature* reporting $10 for approximately 100 messages. The platform itself warns users that interacting with the technology "may hurt you." Project December has been described as "death capitalism" by critics, with Rohrer acknowledging his own wife considered the concept immoral.
Monthly subscriptions. You, Only Virtual charges $20 per month for users to build and chat with a virtual personality. The company is developing a freemium version that will include advertisements, according to *Nature*. HereAfter AI previously charged between $3.99 and $7.99 per month for its memory preservation app, offering a 14-day free trial. The company's website now shows minimal content and appears to be ceasing operations.
Tiered feature pricing. Replika, the largest AI companion platform by user base, allows free text messaging but charges for voice chat, AI-generated selfies, and at higher tiers, the ability to read the bot's internal thoughts. Annual subscriptions start at approximately $70 in the United States. The platform is not specifically designed for grief, but users regularly create companions modeled on deceased people.
Package pricing. StoryFile, which creates interactive video responses from recorded interviews, charges $1 per individual question, $49 for Story Packs with 75 questions, and $499 for a premium package with access to all 1,600 questions, unlimited conversations, and 5-minute video responses. Its Conversa business platform starts at $49 per month.
Undisclosed pricing. Pantio, another digital legacy platform, advertises a yearly subscription with unlimited conversations and no hidden costs, but does not publish the actual annual fee on its website. The company requires users to contact sales.
The shutdown risk
HereAfter AI, one of the earliest companies in the digital afterlife space, is shutting down. The company's pricing page, which previously displayed subscription tiers, now returns minimal content. Families who uploaded interviews, photographs, and voice recordings to build interactive memorials face an unanswered question: what happens to that data?
The company has not publicly disclosed its data retention policy, its shutdown timeline, or whether families can export the raw material they spent hours recording. HereAfter AI has not made its data handling procedures publicly available.
The shutdown is not an isolated event. The AI industry has experienced widespread service closures. When a platform hosting digital recreations of deceased people goes offline, the recreations disappear. The voice data, personality models, and interview content stored on company servers may be inaccessible, sold, or deleted.
What the regulatory vacuum allows
The FTC Funeral Rule governs how funeral homes disclose prices for funeral goods and services. It does not address AI-generated memorials, digital recreations of deceased persons, or subscription services that charge families to maintain access to a simulation. The rule was written in 1984 and most recently updated to address online price disclosure. It does not cover griefbots.
No state requires consent from the deceased before an AI replica is created from their data. No federal law governs who owns the resulting persona. No regulation addresses what happens when the company hosting it fails, gets acquired, or changes its terms of service.
The subscription model creates a specific consumer protection gap. A family pays a monthly fee to maintain access to a digital recreation of someone who died. If the family stops paying, the persona goes dark. If the company shuts down, the persona is deleted. The family has no right to the underlying data, no guarantee of export, and no regulatory body to contact.
Tom\u00e1sz Hollanek, who studies AI technology ethics at the University of Cambridge, raised concerns about advertising-based griefbot models in a report co-authored on the ethical dimensions of the technology. An ad-supported platform showing advertisements during conversations with a simulation of a deceased relative is the logical endpoint of undisclosed monetization.
The cost per message problem
The per-message and per-session pricing models raise a question that the companies do not address on their websites: what is a fair price for a conversation with a simulation of someone who died?
Project December charges $10 for approximately 100 messages. A grieving person processing a loss might exchange hundreds of messages in a single session. At Project December's rate, sustained use over months could cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. The company provides no usage data, no cost projections, and no spending limits on its platform.
You, Only Virtual's $20 monthly fee totals $240 per year. For a family maintaining a virtual personality over several years of grief, the cost compounds. A five-year subscription totals $1,200. There is no lifetime option, no data ownership guarantee, and no contractual obligation for the company to maintain the service.
What families should ask before paying
Before subscribing to any digital afterlife service, families should obtain answers to specific questions that the companies do not volunteer:
- What happens to the data if the company shuts down? Ask whether raw interview recordings, photographs, and voice data can be exported in standard formats. Get the answer in writing.
- Who owns the digital recreation? Determine whether the family retains ownership of the personality model or whether the platform claims it as proprietary content.
- Is there a lifetime or one-time purchase option? Monthly subscriptions mean the recreation exists only as long as payments continue. A one-time fee with guaranteed permanent hosting reduces the shutdown risk.
- What is the total cost over five years? Multiply the monthly fee by 60. A $20 monthly subscription costs $1,200 over five years. Compare that to the cost of traditional memorial options.
- Can the subscription be cancelled without losing access to source material? The raw interviews and photographs belong to the family. The AI simulation may not. Separate the two before uploading anything.
The cheaper alternatives
Families seeking to preserve memories of a deceased relative do not need a griefbot subscription. Lower-cost and free alternatives exist:
- Recorded video interviews. A smartphone and a quiet room produce interview content equivalent to what StoryFile charges $499 to capture. Upload to a private YouTube channel or cloud storage. Cost: free.
- Audio recordings. Voice memos, podcast-style interviews, or oral history recordings preserve a person's actual voice without a subscription. The StoryCorps app provides free guided interview templates. Cost: free.
- Photo and document archives. Cloud storage services (Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox) store photographs, letters, and documents for $2 to $10 per month with full data export. Cost: $24 to $120 per year.
- Written memoirs. Guided memoir templates and memory books cost $15 to $50 as one-time purchases with no ongoing fees.
The total cost of these alternatives ranges from free to $120 per year. Every option gives the family full ownership and full data portability. No company can shut them down, delete them, or hold them for ransom behind a paywall.
What This Means for You
The griefbot industry charges families between $10 and $499 to interact with AI simulations of deceased relatives, with ongoing subscriptions that total $240 to $1,200 over five years. No regulation governs data retention, ownership, or what happens when a company shuts down. HereAfter AI, one of the earliest platforms, is closing without publicly disclosing its data handling plans. Families should record and store memories independently before uploading anything to a subscription platform.
*Sources: Nature Outlook, "Ready or not, the digital afterlife is here," September 15, 2025; Project December website (projectdecember.net); HereAfter AI website and Wayback Machine archived pricing pages (2021, 2023); StoryFile website and published pricing data (spotsaas.com, G2.com); You, Only Virtual website (youonlyvirtual.com); Pantio website (pantio.ai); Replika pricing data via Nature Outlook; AIChief Project December review (aichief.com, July 2026); AIPure Project December listing (aipure.ai, July 2025); University of Cambridge griefbot ethics research (Tomasz Hollanek).*
Get investigations like this in your inbox
Free. Every Tuesday.