Artificial intelligence in ritual services

Chronicle

2025: Funeral homes start using AI services to write obituaries

Funeral homes in the United States are massively introducing artificial intelligence technologies to automatically create obituaries, which allows employees of ritual organizations to save time preparing texts and focus on organizing ceremonies and personally communicating with clients. Specialized AI generators based on ChatGPT and other language models create personalized texts of memory of the deceased, using basic biographical data and preferences for the style of presentation from informal to poetic. This was reported by representatives of the ritual services industry in August 2025.

According to The Washington Post, Walker Poesi, a spokesman for the National Association of Funeral Directors, noted that automated obituary generators free workers from routine tasks and allow more attention to be paid to organizing events. Some funeral homes offer clients a choice of their own between human and artificial intelligence to write an obituary.

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Фото: Freepik

Passare, which develops software for the ritual services industry, has created a dedicated generator based on ChatGPT technologies, which is part of the organization's comprehensive package of services. To create an obituary, the user enters basic facts from the biography of the deceased and chooses the preferred style of writing the text.

Over the past two years, Americans have created more than ten thousand obituaries using the Passare generator, according to the company. The organization is also preparing to launch an AI assistant that will offer creative ideas for funeral ceremonies and memorial events.

An alternative obituary generator developed by Gather is capable of creating texts based on death certificates and details of the planned funeral ceremony. The system automatically adds information about the time and place of the service, the name of the priest and the religious practices used.

The AI service CelebrateAlly offers to fill out a detailed questionnaire about the deceased and his family to create a personalized obituary. The platform uses several language models, including ChatGPT and Claude, offering users ten generation options for $5.^[1]

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