Is StoryFile still operating?

Yes. StoryFile, Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May 2024, and its assets were acquired by Key 7 Investment Company. The company emerged from Chapter 11 under new ownership in early 2025 and the product continues under that leadership. For the current status of any plan or feature, check StoryFile's own website.

What is the main difference between StoryFile and Afterlife AI?

StoryFile records and indexes real video clips of a person answering questions, then plays the best-matching clip back, so you are watching actual footage. Afterlife AI is a governed AI Persona you build yourself while alive, which holds a conversation drawing on the memories and stories you have given it, rather than playing pre-recorded video.

Does Afterlife AI preserve my actual voice?

Afterlife AI offers consent-based voice preservation. You preserve your own voice, by your own choice, while you are alive, and your Persona can speak its replies back in your voice for the family you choose. It is opt-in and consent-based, and that consent is locked at Executor Lock. Nothing autoplays in a grief context; a family member always chooses to tap and listen.

Is there a free way to try Afterlife AI?

Yes. The free build gives you 60 memories and 100 conversations to build your Persona, with no card and no time limit. It includes 1 Trusted Contact and Executor Lock setup, free and kept. Your free build never expires. It is a one-time build budget, not a trial or a countdown.

Where is my data stored with Afterlife AI?

Afterlife AI is an Australian company and your recordings are kept in Australian-hosted storage. Your voice is treated as sensitive information under Australian privacy law. This is a difference worth weighing if data location and governance matter to you.

Looking for a StoryFile alternative?

Q: Can my family keep talking with me after I pass away?

With Afterlife AI, yes. You build your Persona while alive and give explicit consent, including consent for posthumous playback. When you pass, Executor Lock activates through a verified process, and the family you chose can keep talking with your Persona. Your consent is locked at Executor Lock and never changed after death.

StoryFile pioneered interactive video memories. Afterlife AI takes a different path: a governed AI Persona you build yourself while alive, with consent locked for the people you leave behind.

Reviewed: 28 June 2026 · Comparison by Afterlife AI

This comparison is written by the team at Afterlife AI, so read it with that in mind. We have tried to describe StoryFile accurately and fairly, and to compete on facts rather than spin. If you are weighing the two, you deserve a straight answer.

What StoryFile is

StoryFile is an interactive video platform. A person sits in front of a camera and records video answers to a set of life questions. Those recorded clips are stored and indexed by StoryFile's conversational engine, branded Conversa. Later, someone can type or speak a question, and the system uses natural language processing to pick the recorded video clip that best answers it. The result feels like a face-to-face conversation with footage of a real person.

StoryFile became widely known in 2021 when it turned actor William Shatner into an interactive AI video experience, and the technology has been used in memorials and museum projects, including first-person Holocaust and Japanese American internment testimony work. Its consumer product, StoryFile Life, has offered a free trial plus paid options such as a Story Pack and a Premium tier, with paid plans unlocking more questions and longer video answers (publicly reported figures have included a one-time Story Pack and a higher Premium tier; confirm current pricing on StoryFile's own site, as plans change).

One fact worth stating plainly, because it is verifiable and relevant to anyone choosing a long-term legacy product: StoryFile, Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May 2024, and its assets were acquired by Key 7 Investment Company, with the company emerging from Chapter 11 under new ownership in early 2025. The product continues under that new leadership. We mention this not to disparage StoryFile, which has genuine technology, but because continuity matters when you are preserving something meant to outlive you.

What Afterlife AI is

Afterlife AI is an Australian company that lets a living person build a governed AI Persona of themselves: their memories, stories, values, and way of speaking, with consent-based voice preservation as the next layer. You talk with your own Persona while you are alive and it grows with you. After you pass, Executor Lock activates through a verified process, and the family you chose can keep talking with you.

The core difference is who does the building and how consent is handled. With Afterlife AI you author your own Persona, in the first person, while you are here to shape it.

How Afterlife AI compares

Here is an honest side-by-side, strengths and trade-offs both ways.

StoryFile's real strength is interactive video. If your priority is seeing and hearing a person's actual recorded face and voice on screen, answering from real footage, that is what StoryFile was built to do, and it does it well.
Afterlife AI is conversational rather than pre-recorded video. Your Persona generates replies in conversation, drawing on the memories and stories you have given it, so it can respond to questions you never explicitly recorded an answer to.
Afterlife AI is built by you while alive, in the first person. You are not being filmed and indexed by someone else; you are authoring your own Persona and giving direct, informed consent.
Afterlife AI adds explicit posthumous governance through Executor Lock. Your consent, including consent for your family to keep talking with your Persona after you are gone, is captured and then locked at Executor Lock and never changed after death.
Afterlife AI offers consent-based voice preservation. You can preserve your own voice, by consent, while alive, so your Persona can speak back in your voice for the family you choose. This is voice preservation you opt into, not a generic synthetic voice bolted on.
Afterlife AI is an Australian company with Australian-hosted storage. Your recordings are kept in Australian-hosted storage, and your voice is treated as sensitive information under Australian privacy law.

Who each is best for

Choose StoryFile if your goal is an interactive archive of literal video footage, especially for a museum, institution, or a one-time filmed testimony where seeing the recorded person on screen is the whole point.
Choose Afterlife AI if you want a living, growing Persona you build yourself, with clear posthumous consent governance, voice preservation by consent, and a conversation that keeps going for the family you choose, from an Australian company that hosts your data in Australia.

Pricing

Afterlife AI pricing is simple and public.

Free build: 60 memories and 100 conversations to build your Persona, free, no card, no time limit. It includes 1 Trusted Contact and Executor Lock setup, free and kept. Your free build never expires.
Legacy: $14.99 per month.
Eternal: $29.99 per month.

Family inherits the time you have paid for. StoryFile's pricing has historically included a free trial plus one-time paid packs and a premium tier; we will not quote figures that may be out of date, so check StoryFile's current pricing directly.

Frequently asked questions

See the questions below for the most common things people ask when comparing the two.

Sources

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