Meta Platforms has explored using artificial intelligence to manage digital legacies after a member's death, according to a patent granted in late December. Facebook initially created an approach in 2009 to managing accounts after a member's death, introducing the ability to "memorialize" a profile, which froze the account to prevent it from appearing in public spaces while allowing friends to share memories. A "Legacy contact" allowed people to manage accounts of deceased members. During the company's metaverse period, in 2023, an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman described how Mark Zuckerberg wanted to create virtual avatars for deceased people. Three years ago, Meta called the idea "Project Lazarus." The patent, titled "Simulation of a user of a social networking system using a language model," was granted to Meta Platforms in late December. Primary inventor, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, outlined how a large language model (LLM) could "simulate" a person's social-media activity, such as responding to content posted by live people. Meta's filing suggests this could maintain community engagement and reduce the "severe and permanent" emotional impact on followers when a user passes away, also considering periods when a person takes a break from posting. The patent describes training the model on "user-specific" data, including historical platform activity, comments, likes, or content. If an account has not been memorialized or deleted, it remains "active" and may continue to receive targeted advertising, creating