Stewardship, Not Ownership
DearAngel is being built to preserve a person’s memories, identity, knowledge, voice, relationships, and story with dignity and consent. We believe a family’s ability to preserve someone they love should not depend on what they can afford during one of the most difficult periods of their lives.
What Stewardship Means
DearAngel does not treat a preserved identity as merely a collection of files or an AI model. We are entrusted with deeply personal material — memories, family history, voice, appearance, beliefs, values, relationships, letters, photographs, video, audio, life stories, private reflections, advice, hopes, regrets, cultural influences, and decision-making patterns. Stewardship means treating this material as something entrusted to us, not something we own for exploitation.
Our Stewardship Commitments
Consent Comes First
A DearAngel should exist because the person being represented intentionally chose to create it. Having photographs, recordings, emails, or documents about someone is not, by itself, permission to build an AI representation of them.
The Person Defines Their Representation
The creator controls how they wish to be represented. DearAngel is designed to preserve who a person chose to be, rather than letting algorithms, relatives, or circumstances silently redefine that identity.
Original Material Matters
AI models will change. Avatar and voice technology will change. A person's original recordings, photographs, writings, and interviews are the durable foundation everything else is built on.
Portability Matters
DearAngel is not meant to be the sole custodian of someone's identity. We are designing toward eventual export of preserved material in usable, documented, model-independent formats — a design commitment we are building toward, not yet a finished feature.
Privacy Is Part of Stewardship
Family conversations, source material, permissions, and relationships require strict boundaries. One person's private conversation with a DearAngel should never automatically become another family member's conversation history.
Preservation Without Financial Coercion
DearAngel should never become a situation equivalent to “pay us or your loved one disappears.” We are designing the organization so that basic preservation is treated as a stewardship responsibility, not leverage for extracting payment from grieving families.
We can’t promise perpetual free computational services — realtime voice and avatar experiences carry real infrastructure costs. What we can commit to is distinguishing preservation of what someone has shared from the cost of the most demanding ways to experience it.
Your Memories Are Not Advertising Inventory
Our model is being built around donations rather than advertising or selling the personal identity entrusted to DearAngel. We do not intend to fund this service by inserting advertising into conversations with a loved one’s DearAngel, or by selling preserved personal identity information to advertisers.
Technology Changes; Stewardship Remains
AI models will improve. Voices will improve. Avatars will improve. Interfaces will change. The stewardship obligation stays the same: preserve the human source, preserve identity structure, preserve provenance, preserve consent and permissions, and preserve temporal truth about what a person actually experienced.
A person’s preserved identity should be able to outlive a particular AI model, hosting provider, or even DearAngel itself.
A DearAngel is an AI representation built from material its creator chose to preserve — not a claim that the person is still watching, still learning, or still here. Even when a DearAngel helps a loved one think through a future moment the creator never lived to see, it should never pretend to have witnessed it. That reality boundary, and the privacy boundary between different family members’ private conversations, are themselves part of what we are stewarding.
The DearAngel Legacy Grant
A person facing terminal illness, serious financial hardship, hospice care, or circumstances where the cost of preservation would otherwise prevent participation should have a path to receive DearAngel preservation assistance without charge.
We are developing the DearAngel Legacy Grant so financial circumstances do not determine whose memories and identity can be preserved. As funding becomes available, donated resources can help provide preservation services to people who otherwise could not afford them. Someone navigating a serious diagnosis already carries enough medical, caregiving, and family expense — adding another financial burden runs against everything this program is meant to be.
Supported by People Who Believe This Should Exist
DearAngel is initially funded solely through donations. Your support makes possible:
- Preserving human stories and source material
- Developing the DearAngel identity knowledge system
- Building privacy and permission infrastructure
- Maintaining secure storage
- Developing model-independent preservation formats
- Improving accessibility
- Building the Legacy Grant program
- Supporting long-term stewardship research
What DearAngel Is — and Is Not
DearAngel is an AI representation built from material the creator chose to preserve.
It is not:
- the literal continuation of the person
- proof of consciousness after death
- communication from an afterlife
- a claim that the person continues observing events
Preserving that reality boundary is part of stewardship, not a limitation we hide.
Stewardship Principles
- A DearAngel exists by consent.
- The creator defines their identity.
- Original sources remain important.
- Private information stays permissioned.
- AI inference must remain distinguishable from memory.
- Families should not be financially coerced through grief.
- Donations do not purchase ownership of a person.
- Preservation should be portable.
- Technology may change; stewardship does not.
Help Build Something Worth Preserving
DearAngel is initially being built through the support of people who believe human memories, knowledge, relationships, and identity deserve thoughtful long-term stewardship. If you believe this should exist, you can help support the work.
DearAngel is not yet a registered nonprofit organization. Donations support our mission but are not currently tax-deductible.