Is ‘Death Tech’ Going to Change How We Approach End of Life?

Is ‘Death Tech’ helping us confront the subject we can’t? Credit: Pixabay

In 2024, Crunchbase announced that investment in death-related startups increased remarkably over the past few years. As a relatively new sector to be disrupted, it’s understandable why startups want to enter this niche market, as the end-of-life industry is expected to generate upwards of $103 billion by 2027, but it’s maintained a reputation of resisting change and innovation. 

Does that resistance reflect our own reluctance to face death? And if so, does the rise of ‘Death Tech’ signal a newfound ability to confront end-of-life? 

Independent journalist Alexander Chikunov attributed the problem of poor estate planning to our fear of death: 56 million deaths happen every year, leaving families with a heavier burden to bear than grief. Some startups are targeting these painstaking processes that no one wants to deal with: planning a funeral, choosing a burial plot, writing a will. Now a family can, presumably, tackle those tasks within minutes. And what about alternative options? 

The rise of conscious living and environmentalism alongside a general trend — a higher demand for cremation services — has spawned startups that turn death into “a giving back” by transforming ashes into coral reefs and nutrient-rich soil. We don’t have to remain in a casket. We can, bringing the field of physics to mind, return to the whole, generate new life, contribute to the cause. These adjacent movements have changed what death means and how we approach it. 

Is ‘Death Tech’ fueling dangerous fantasy? Pixabay

These companies, directing tech to simplify processes and make use of our remains — by turning ashes into diamonds even — have sparked some controversy. Another class of startups have made headlines recently to varying degrees of alarm, claiming to assist with grief and the preservation of one’s legacy with digital memorial platforms, digital afterlife management (that’s right, your social media account), and AI replicas of the deceased.

The most controversial of them all, “grief bots” or “AI avatars,” have been criticized for fooling us into believing that we can casually talk with the dead or listen to them read us bedtime stories. But grief telephones worldwide already help people imagine — without the fancy tech — that they are speaking to the deceased on the phone. We’ll always seek connection to those who have died; that we know. 

But we have digital and virtual selves now, and that appears to be changing how we’re approaching end-of-life. We’ve officially entered the age of multimedia and multidimensional record-keeping. These tech services provide individuals the option of recording video and audio of themselves to leave behind specifically when they die, allowing them to go so far as to create virtual afterlives. These new options may encourage future generations to think about preserving their legacies even earlier on, and to take care of themselves and others with a heightened “awareness.”

Phrases such as “death teaches us how to live,” as stated by artist Mike Egan and The New York Post, continue to pepper contemporary discourse. It’s a subject not to be avoided. As they say: don’t wait for the phone to ring. The dark side, or the danger, it turns out, is fantasy — that death isn’t going to happen, that it didn’t happen. 

So death may be easier to confront technically, with services for estate and funeral planning, but perhaps harder to process emotionally, with ‘death tech’ like ghost avatars receiving backlash for exploiting our natural desire to keep our loved ones “alive” through AI.  

The most positive angle on ‘Death Tech,’ having raised “hundreds of millions of dollars in funding,” according to Crunchbase, is that our relationship to death just might be changing. The real question here is: are we finally ready to face death? 

‘Death Tech’ says yes. 

We’re getting there, and it just might change how we live our lives.