Have you had a conversation with your loved ones about what should happen if you’re ever on life support? Probably not, especially if you’re young. A startup called LifeFolder is hoping you’ll be more comfortable having that conversation with a Facebook messenger bot.




Connect with “Emily from LifeFolder” on Facebook, and you’ll be launched into a half-hour of conversation on what you’d want at the end of your life. You can pause whenever you like. Most of the questions ask you to agree or disagree on a scale of 1 to 5. If you select “3”, indicating you don’t know don’t care, that statement won’t show up on the document that results.

At the end, the bot emails you a PDF (only legally binding in certain states) indicating who you want your decision-making proxy to be in an end-of-life situation, and describing your wishes. It’s not a medical document saying you want a particular treatment, but a description of what you’d like your loved ones to keep in mind. For example, the bot asks whether you’d like people to talk to you even if they’re not sure whether you understand. And you can play a grim game of “would you rather” (although Emily phrases it much more nicely) deciding things like whether you’d rather be dead or in constant pain.


This is just the summary. Later in the document, there are lists of statements under headings “strongly agree,” “somewhat agree,” “somewhat disagree,” or “strongly disagree.”

Founder Haje Jan Kamps says LifeFolder may eventually offer estate planning and funeral care planning for a fee. The bot, which is free to use, gets a few bits of public Facebook information about you (Kamps says they only use your name) and their privacy policy suggests they may use your information to advertise their own and third-party services.



After you talk with Emily, you may feel better about starting a conversation with your loved ones; part of her job, you realize toward the end, is to help you get more comfortable talking about death.