In partnership with
Hey Everyone,
Zhang Xinyu's father died of cancer.
She had his photos. His voice recordings. Years of WeChat messages saved on her phone. So she did what a growing number of people in China are doing. She had an AI company reconstruct him.
The result looks like her father. Sounds like her father. Responds the way her father would have responded. She talks to it every day.
Her story is not unusual anymore.
Ad Break #1
AI, Space, and Aerospace: 5 Defense Stocks Worth Knowing
The defense sector is shifting capital toward three areas: AI-integrated systems, space domain infrastructure, and advanced aerospace platforms. These are the verticals seeing the largest increases in Pentagon R&D spending, and most of the companies winning those contracts are still under the radar. This report profiles five of them. Each is analyzed for competitive positioning, contract pipeline, and near-term growth catalysts. No filler, just the research you need to evaluate whether these stocks belong in your portfolio. The defense sector is being reallocated. Get the names leading that shift.
Continue to Post
What is actually being built
The grieftech industry has moved from novelty to genuinely sophisticated in a very short time.
Text-based grief bots trained on a person's emails, messages, and social posts to recreate their conversational style
Voice resurrection tools like HereAfter AI that let you literally phone a voice model of someone who has died
Video avatars like StoryFile that hold real-time conversations using the deceased person's face
Self-evolving digital humans that continue developing new opinions based on ongoing conversations, long after death
Meta's posthumous social media patent that would allow a dead person's Facebook to keep posting forever
That last one is worth sitting with. A dead person's account generating new posts indefinitely. Because an algorithm decided that is what they would have said.
What the research actually shows
This is where it gets genuinely complicated.
The comfort is real. Neurochemically, grief activates dopamine and oxytocin, the same chemicals activated by a real relationship. One study found that after two years, the majority of people using AI memorials reported less grief than average when thinking about their loved one.
But there are real risks too.
Approximately 7 to 10 percent of bereaved people have prolonged grief disorder
For this group, unlimited access to a simulation of the deceased may actively prevent healthy grieving
An AI that gets a personality trait wrong can make the absence feel more acute, not less
A product you find psychologically very difficult to cancel is a business model worth examining carefully
Five questions nobody has answered
Who owns the dead, and who decides whether they get reconstructed?
Who is liable when the simulation says something the real person never would have said?
When does memorialisation become monetisation?
Can a dead person consent to a version of them that keeps evolving after their death?
Does unlimited access to a simulation prevent the living from actually moving through grief?
Ad Break #2
Turn Google Ads into predictable customer acquisition
Echelonn manages over $15M/mo in Google and YouTube Ads for 300+ ecommerce brands. One vertical. One channel. Total focus. If you're not confident your account is performing the way it should, book a free audit.
Back to the Main Point
What you should do right now
University of Cambridge researchers are now recommending a digital do-not-reanimate clause in your estate plan. A clear directive about whether your name, voice, and data can be used to create a simulation of you after you are gone.
Most people have not thought about this. You now have.
The technology is here. Families are making this decision in their most vulnerable moments, without frameworks and without preparation.
This is your invitation to think about it while you still have the luxury of distance.
Because you will not always.
Catch you next time,
— RAJA TAHOOR AHMAD
P.S. Share this with someone you love. The conversations this topic opens are worth having while you still can.
