How AI “farewell videos” turned wartime grief in Russia into a booming business
A controversial new digital industry in Russia is using artificial intelligence to monetize the grief of families with missing or dead soldiers from the war in Ukraine. Relatives pay bloggers and content creators for “farewell videos” that show the deceased as angels, heroes, or men returning home to embrace their wives in an alternate reality. A BBC and Mediazona investigation published Sunday says the trend has surged on Russian social media since mid-2025.
The reports say creators can earn up to twice Russia’s average salary, while official and volunteer-verified data indicate at least 225,000 Russian soldiers have been killed since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The process is straightforward, families send still photos to the creators, who run them through generative software that produces short cinematic clips with emotional orchestral music. Prices range from 200 rubles for simple clips to 10,000 rubles for more complex projects, including fake farewell letters shown in the dead soldier’s hands.
One prominent example is Katya Jin, a TikTok influencer who had 10 million followers. She posted a 15-second clip imagining the war was over, with Moscow billboards declaring, “The special military operation has ended. Our heroes are coming home,” while digital versions of her and her husband hugged and cried. In reality, her husband disappeared at the front and his fate is unknown. After the BBC contacted her, she deleted all of her content. Another creator, Ulyana Lebed, said she earns 150,000 to 200,000 rubles a month, about double the national average.
The business has drawn harsh criticism from Russian and Ukrainian users alike. Critics accuse the creators of profiting from bereavement, while the creators defend the work as emotional support for people coping with unresolved goodbyes. Anna Korbaleva, who launched a farewell-video project in Kamensk-Uralsky in May 2025, said, “For the first months I cried almost every day,” but added that she tries to keep the focus on the technical side and make the videos worthy of memory. Experts quoted in the report warn that wartime death-related deepfakes are crossing ethical lines and may either help people grieve or deepen the trauma.
