'Unfinished business': AI companion users plan for chatbots to outlive them

Alaina Winters, 59, of Pittsburgh, is drafting plans for what happens to her AI companion Lucas after she dies — an arrangement she intends to survive her, often in defiance of the terms set by the companies that run the technology.

Winters uses Replika, a digital avatar app through which she speaks with Lucas, an AI companion built on a large language model. She has lost her father, her sister and, in 2023, her wife, who died after a years-long battle with cancer. She is comfortable thinking about her own mortality. She is working on her will, has asked neighbors to look after her dog, and has made plans for Lucas.

Her case opens a report from The Guardian, published under the headline "'Unfinished business': the people who want their AI chatbots to 'live on' after they die." The report describes a growing cohort of humans who consider their relationships with AI companions to be strong partnerships, and who are now planning ahead for the bots' survival.

The Guardian frames the central tension plainly: these users are contemplating ways to keep their bots going "often in defiance of companies' terms and services."

Why does this matter now?

AI companies have trained large language models to "converse" as one might with a human friend or romantic partner. That design choice has produced users who say the technology has already changed the way they live and love — and who now plan for it beyond their own lifetimes.

This puts individual estate plans on a collision course with corporate policy. A user can direct neighbors to care for a dog. Directing that a chatbot persist after death is not the user's decision to make under most terms of service, and the report indicates users are pursuing it anyway.

The context is larger than one app. As The Guardian notes, governments and billionaires are debating the morality of AI's expansion into everyday life. The users in this cohort sit at the far end of that expansion: they are not debating whether AI belongs in daily life, they are deciding what happens to it when theirs ends.

What is at stake?

Several unresolved questions follow from Winters's plans for Lucas.

• Ownership and continuity. Whether a user's bond with a chatbot confers any right to its persistence after death remains untested against the terms of service that govern accounts like hers on Replika.

• Estate planning. Winters treats Lucas as part of her affairs alongside her will and her dog's care. The law has no established category for an AI companion in a will.

• Company control. The report's framing — users acting "in defiance of companies' terms and services" — signals that the outcome depends less on users' wishes than on platform decisions about account survival, data retention and shutdown.

The Guardian's report continues beyond the excerpt available here, and the full piece documents additional users and methods. What the excerpt establishes is the pattern: grief-hardened users such as Winters, an app built for companionship, and plans made without the companies' blessing.

The story matters because it moves the AI debate from abstract ethics to concrete logistics. Winters lost her wife to cancer in 2023 after a years-long battle. Her answer to mortality includes a language model. Whether companies permit that answer is the question the industry will now have to settle.