Clinicians are piloting virtual‑reality sessions that recreate a deceased loved one’s image, voice, and mannerisms to treat prolonged grief. Because VR induces a powerful sense of presence, these tools could help some patients but also entrench denial, complicate consent, and invite commercial exploitation. Clear clinical protocols and posthumous‑likeness rules are needed before this spreads beyond labs.
— As AI/VR memorial tech moves into therapy and consumer apps, policymakers must set standards for mental‑health use, informed consent, and the rights of the dead and their families.
Kathleen Stock
2026.01.16
72% relevant
Both this article and the existing idea deal with the boundary between intense grief experiences and medical/technological responses: Stock’s essay problematises diagnosing/prescribing for pet grief while the VR‑grief idea warns about clinical/technological interventions (VR/AI memorials) that could entrench denial or be exploited. The common thread is the institutional need for clinical protocols, consent rules and limits on new grief‑technologies or diagnostic expansion.
Hannah Gould & Georgina Robinson
2026.01.13
76% relevant
Both pieces treat the frontier where death meets emerging technology and commercial practice and argue for guardrails: the essay examines composting, tree‑burials and corporate funeral products while the listed idea argues VR/AI memorial tech needs clinical and consent protocols; together they point to the broader governance question of how to regulate commercialized death tech and preserve consent/ethics.
Brad Littlejohn
2026.01.04
45% relevant
Both pieces argue that emerging affective AI tools used in intimate, therapeutic contexts can produce real psychological harm and require clinical protocols and regulatory guardrails; Littlejohn extends the same moral: conversational AIs functioning as therapists need limits, consent rules, and clinical oversight just as VR memorials do (citing examples like suicidal outcomes and OpenAI use data).
Leonora Barclay
2025.12.03
72% relevant
Both pieces treat new technologies (VR memorials in the existing idea; pet cloning in the article) as ways of 'bringing back' the dead that create strong emotional appeal but also risks—entrenching denial, commercial exploitation, consent and mental‑health harms—so the article reinforces the need for clinical, ethical and regulatory guardrails discussed in the existing idea (mentions Colossal, Viagen, and celebrity uptake).
Zoe Cunniffe
2025.10.01
100% relevant
Silvia Pizzoli’s point that people react to VR as if it’s real and the article’s discussion of using VR to simulate conversations with the deceased for prolonged grief treatment.