Death is big business and tech wants a cut.

From American public media this is marketplace tech.

I'm Lily Dramale. The universe of industries that make money off of dying in this country is extensive and tech entrepreneurs

have managed to insert themselves into various corners of it. See digital

estate planning. See also tools that help you crowd fund funeral costs.

There's even a startup backed by Mark Cuban that promises to turn a loved one's

ashes or hair into a diamond. That is according to culture journalist Mejika Agarwal, who's been

reporting on the grief tech industry, including ghost bots. These are chat bots that are supposed to help us process grief. She wrote about it for

Vox and says there is a wide range of options gaining traction right now. So on the milder side of the spectrum is apps like story file and hereafter AI that are essentially interactive memory apps.

They allow you to record interviews and then they introduce an AI-powered

element to make those interactive. So for instance if I was if I was planning my funeral and if I wanted my loved ones to have an

experience where they could ask me questions about what was your favorite food, what was

a memorable time in your life I would be able to answer back and then on the other

side of the spectrum are apps like you only virtual which essentially aim to

recreate the sense of the disease.

They're much more intense.

They don't have any disclosures about the app being fictional

or how they use privacy data and the founder basically says that grief shouldn't

exist as an emotion in a couple of years because of where we've reached from a technological standpoint.

And what are the ethical concerns that have been expressed about that view?

So obviously the ethics are really muddy around this, especially with the latter model, because

a vulnerable users most times aren't trying to figure out how their data is being used.

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