Startups working in the death tech or grief tech industry have designed different approaches that enable users to communicate with the dead, via text, video, audio, or photorealist avatars. The technology represents a recent shift from photography to artificial intelligence as a tool for remembering the deceased.

Ginger Liu is the founder of Hollywood’s Ginger Media & Entertainment, a writer and researcher on technology and entertainment, an MFA photographer and filmmaker, and host of the podcast The Digital Afterlife of Grief.