[ExI] AI bots after user death

[BillK]

On Thu, 19 Feb 2026 at 11:55, Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> <snip>
>
> Patents define specific methods. If alternate methods are used they could
yield the same effect and not infringe on the patent.
>
> Further, if anyone can demonstrate prior art (e.g. a sci-fi book, a blog
post, a research article) publicly describing the idea which predates the
filing time of the patent, then the parent can be challenged on those
grounds.
>
> This is work that patent attorneys and the patent office does (a prior
art search) prior to granting a patent, so presumably Meta has defined a
specific way of doing it that had not been described before. This means
that other ways of doing it, described prior to Meta's patent, are still
open for anyone to implement.
>
> Jason
> _______________________________________________


I asked the new Gemini 3.1 Pro for an opinion, and it basically agreed with
Jason.
BillK

Gemini 3.1 Pro -

While Meta was indeed granted a US patent (US Patent No. 12,513,102) in
late December 2025 for technology that simulates a deceased or absent
user's social media activity, this does not mean that anyone building an AI
agent to preserve a person's personality after death automatically needs a
license from them.

Here is why you likely wouldn't need a license from Meta to build a "grief
tech" or post-mortem AI agent, provided you go about it the right way:

1. Patents Cover Specific Implementations, Not Broad Concepts

A patent does not grant ownership over a general science-fiction concept
like "digital immortality" or "AI avatars of dead people." It only protects
the specific technical method outlined in the patent's legally binding
claims.

Meta’s patent specifically describes an AI model integrated into a social
networking system. It involves training a large language model on a user's
historical platform data (such as specific posts, likes, comments, and
direct messages) to allow a digital persona to autonomously continue
generating social media feed updates, leaving comments, and replying to DMs
as if the user never left.

If you build a standalone AI agent—such as a personal chatbot app, a
voice-interactive memorial website, or an LLM trained on personal diaries
and emails rather than social media network integrations—you would not be
infringing on Meta’s specific method of simulating a user inside a social
network feed.

2. The "Grief Tech" Industry and Prior Art Already Exist

Meta is not the first company to explore this space, meaning they cannot
claim to have invented the underlying idea.

Microsoft's 2021 Patent: Microsoft secured a very similar patent in 2021
for a chatbot capable of mimicking deceased individuals, which their
executives later called "disturbing" and chose not to pursue.

Existing Startups: There is already a booming industry of "grief tech" or
"ghost bot" startups—such as HereAfter AI, Eternos, Replika, and You, Only
Virtual. Many of these were founded and operating well before Meta filed
its patent in November 2023. Because these companies establish "prior art,"
Meta's patent is necessarily narrow to avoid overlapping with what was
already public knowledge.

3. Meta Claims It Is an "Exploratory" Patent

Tech giants frequently file thousands of patents a year defensively, to
prevent competitors from suing them, rather than to build the products
themselves. Meta spokespeople, including its Chief Technology Officer
Andrew Bosworth (who is listed as the inventor), have publicly stated that
the company has "no plans to move forward" with deploying this feature.
While a patent still gives them the legal right to sue for infringement,
they are highly unlikely to enforce it against third-party startups unless
those startups are directly scraping Facebook/Instagram data or trying to
build unauthorized, automated bots that operate inside Meta's own platforms.

In summary: You do not need a license from Meta to build an AI agent that
mimics a deceased person's personality, as long as your underlying software
architecture and technical methods do not directly copy Meta’s specific
patented mechanism of autonomous social media network simulation.
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