Grief Bots from the Perspective of a Digital Media Scholar

Every one of us now leaves behind an estate we can't see: search histories, private messages, location data, screen time, card transactions. Dr Leah Henrickson, a senior lecturer in digital media and cultures who has spent a decade researching AI and now works in death studies, joins Ben Kelly to unpack what happens to all of it when we die.

The conversation moves from the practical - who actually owns your accounts, what a legacy contact can and can't do, how to help families plan for their digital assets - to the genuinely unresolved: AI chatbots trained on the dead. Leah is even-handed and unusually candid about where the research runs out, and makes a direct case that the deathcare sector still has time to shape how this technology gets used.

What you'll gain:

• What a digital footprint really includes, and who owns which parts of it after death
  
  
• A pre-planning conversation you can start with families this week - the "post-death folder"
  
  
• Why platforms rarely hand over a deceased person's account, and what memorialisation actually offers
  
  
• The vocabulary - griefbot, deadbot, thanabot - and why the term you choose carries a judgement
  
  
• A clear-eyed read on where AI grief tools help, where they harm, and why your sector's voice matters now