What happens to your Grok conversations when you die

SpaceXAI: the company that makes Grok, called xAI until it was renamed in July 2026, owned by SpaceX since February 2, 2026.

Private Chat: Grok's mode, marked by a ghost icon, in which conversations stay out of your history and are deleted within 30 days.

Persona: the AI version of you that you build on Afterlife.ai™ while you are alive, from your own memories, values and cloned voice.

Executor Lock™: Idy's patent-pending system of named executors, Trusted Contacts, a verified death report and a sealed snapshot of your Persona that can never be changed.

When you die, your Grok conversations stay in your account, closed to everyone, until you or SpaceXAI deletes them. Nothing in SpaceXAI's terms, privacy policy or consumer FAQ mentions death, so a death changes nothing on its own. Your family cannot sign in, because SpaceXAI's terms say "You may not share your account credentials or make your account available to anyone else," and SpaceXAI publishes no form for an executor or next of kin (SpaceXAI Terms of Service, last updated September 11, 2026, read October 2, 2026).

Two clocks decide how long the history lasts. The first is the 30-day deletion rule in the privacy policy, which applies when someone deletes conversations or the account: "if you choose to delete any or all of your conversations or if you choose to delete your account, we will delete the data within 30 days unless it is necessary to retain the data for legal, compliance, or safety purposes" (SpaceXAI Privacy Policy, effective August 24, 2026). The second, newer clock is the 120-day inactivity rule in the terms, which can remove the whole account after a death without anyone pressing a button.

Yes, SpaceXAI can delete a Grok account that has been inactive for more than 120 days. Its consumer terms, last updated September 11, 2026, list the reasons SpaceXAI may "terminate or suspend your access to our Service, cancel your subscription or account, or delete your account at any time without notice to you," and the last reason is "Your account has been inactive for more than 120 days." That clause overturns what most guides still say, including SpaceXAI's own consumer FAQ, which is dated May 12, 2025 and tells users, "You can keep your data on your SpaceXAI account for as long as you wish" (SpaceXAI Consumer FAQs, read October 2, 2026). The terms are the newer document and the one that governs.

For a family, the result is simple. If nobody uses a dead person's Grok account, SpaceXAI may delete it, with every conversation in it, from about four months after the last sign-in, and it does not have to warn anyone first. The family cannot keep the account alive either, because using the person's login breaches the same terms. The 120-day clock is now among the shortest of any major service, as our comparison of inactivity clocks compared across WhatsApp, Grok, Google and Microsoft shows.

SpaceXAI LLC owns and runs Grok, and SpaceXAI has been part of SpaceX since SpaceX acquired xAI on February 2, 2026; xAI was renamed SpaceXAI in July 2026. SpaceXAI's privacy policy names "SpaceXAI LLC" as the company that handles your personal information and describes itself as "a US-based company," and grok.com describes Grok as "an AI assistant built by SpaceXAI." The same policy says "SpaceXAI is a separate company from X Corp.," even though X Corp. has been part of the same group since xAI acquired it on March 28, 2025 (Wikipedia, SpaceXAI).

Ownership matters because your data follows the company's terms, and SpaceXAI's terms say the agreement "may be assigned by us without restriction" while it "may not be transferred or assigned by you." Our guide to what happens to your X (Twitter) account when you die covers the X side of the group, including the full ownership timeline from Elon Musk's $44 billion purchase of Twitter in 2022.

Yes, Grok on X follows X's terms and privacy policy, while Grok on grok.com and in the Grok apps follows SpaceXAI's. SpaceXAI's terms say "Use of Grok on the X platform is not governed by these Terms," and its privacy policy says use of Grok on X "is governed by the X Privacy Policy and X Terms, not this SpaceXAI Privacy Policy." Many people use both without noticing the line between them.

X's deceased-user process removes the X account, and with it the Grok on X history, but it never opens the account to anyone (X Help Center, read October 2, 2026). If you signed in to grok.com with your X account, SpaceXAI's terms say it may bring in your X profile, preferences and post history, so your Grok history can draw on your X history even though the two sit under different rules.

No, your family cannot get your Grok chats after you die, because SpaceXAI publishes no route for anyone but you. Its privacy policy says it may verify a request "by validating your account credentials or submitting additional information," and that an Authorized Agent needs "written permission to exercise your rights on your behalf," which only you can sign. An executor who arrives after your death has neither the login nor your signed permission.

The password is not a plan either. The terms forbid sharing credentials or making the account available to anyone else, and a password in a drawer is usually out of date by the time anyone needs it. What a named executor can do is know that the account exists, find any files you downloaded, and remove anything on X through X's deceased-user process. Our guide to what a digital executor does covers the role, and the same gap runs through who controls your identity after you die.

Privacy laws do not change the answer much, as the section on GDPR and the CCPA below explains. The practical rule is that anything you want your family to have from Grok has to leave Grok while you are alive.

You export your Grok history from Settings, then Data Controls, in the Grok app or on grok.com, where SpaceXAI's consumer FAQ says "You are in control to access, download, and delete your data" (SpaceXAI Consumer FAQs, read October 2, 2026). SpaceXAI's 2025 transparency report counted 229,589 downloads through those controls by US-based users, each completed within a day on average. The steps below also clean up what you would rather nobody read.

1. Open Settings, then Data Controls. On grok.com the same area may be labeled Settings, then Data.

2. Request a download of your data. Expect the file within about a day, based on SpaceXAI's own figures.

3. Save the file in three places. Keep two copies on drives you own and one in a cloud account you control, and tell your executor where it is.

4. Remove share links you no longer want. Go to grok.com/share-links and choose Remove next to each one.

5. Delete conversations you would not want read. Deleted conversations leave SpaceXAI's systems within 30 days, subject to the legal, compliance and safety exceptions.

6. Check Improve the model and personalization. In Data Controls, decide whether your content trains Grok and whether your X data personalizes it.

7. Repeat the parts that apply on X. If you used Grok inside X, X's own settings control that history.

8. Write down what you want done. Say in your estate file whether your Grok account should be left to lapse or deleted, and keep your logins in a password manager with emergency access.

If you prefer conversations that never enter your history, use Private Chat, the ghost icon at the top right of the screen. SpaceXAI says Private Chat conversations "will not appear in your conversation history" and "will be deleted from SpaceXAI systems within 30 days unless it is necessary that they be kept longer for legal, compliance, or safety purposes."

In August 2025, Grok's share links made hundreds of thousands of conversations searchable on Google, and those links are still the part of your Grok history most likely to outlive your account. Forbes reported on August 20, 2025 that xAI had published hundreds of thousands of Grok conversations through its share feature (Forbes), and Fortune counted more than 370,000 indexed chats two days later (Fortune).

SpaceXAI's FAQ now warns that "Any share link you generate will be accessible to anyone you choose to share the link with," and that a link shared publicly "may be subject to indexing by a search engine (e.g., Google) just like any other publicly shared content." You can revoke any or all of your links at grok.com/share-links. Removing a link stops it working, but copies already made by search engines or other people follow their own rules, so the sooner you remove a link, the fewer copies exist. Deleting your account does not reach into a search engine's cache, which is why removing old links belongs on the same list as downloading your data.

Privacy laws give strong rights to living users and very little to the family of someone who has died. The European Union's GDPR says in Recital 27 that it "does not apply to the personal data of deceased persons" and leaves the rules to each member state (GDPR Recital 27); some countries, such as France and Spain, have their own rules for the data of the dead, so any right a family holds comes from national law. While you are alive, Article 12(3) of the GDPR gives you an answer within one month, extendable by two more months for complex requests (GDPR Article 12).

In California, the CCPA requires a business to respond to a verifiable consumer request within 45 days, extendable once by 45 more days with notice (California Civil Code 1798.130). The right belongs to a "consumer," a living California resident, and SpaceXAI's process still runs through your own credentials or your signed permission for an agent. SpaceXAI's transparency report shows how those rights are used in practice.

The two biggest rows count different people, since downloads cover all US-based users pressing a button and deletion requests count only self-identified California residents writing to a privacy team (SpaceXAI CCPA Transparency Report, January 1 to December 31, 2025, read October 2, 2026). The pattern still holds. SpaceXAI's self-service tools work quickly and at scale for a living user, and every one of them needs that user signed in.

No major AI assistant publishes a legacy contact for its chat history, and Grok's 120-day inactivity clause is the shortest account clock among them. Every assistant below lets a living user download and delete, and none lets a family inherit the conversations. The table was refreshed against each company's own help pages on October 2, 2026.

Google comes closest, because Inactive Account Manager can pass the whole account, Gemini activity included, to people you name. Everyone else built the two buttons a living user asks for, which are download and delete, and stopped there. The deepest comparison is in our guide to what happens to your ChatGPT memories when you die, which covers the assistant most people have used longest.

What should outlive you is the version of you that you chose, built on purpose, with an ending written in advance. A Grok history is a record of questions you asked a machine, and much of it is half-finished thinking you would never want read aloud. Your family and your clients do not need your chat log. They need your judgment, your stories and your voice, answering their questions after you are gone, under rules you set while you were alive.

A Persona on Afterlife.ai™ is built for exactly that. You build your Persona in conversation, each memory saved in the first person, in your own words, and when you die, Executor Lock™ seals your Persona as a snapshot that can never be changed, with nothing pruned and nothing re-weighted. Nobody, including your family or Idy, can edit a memory or change your personality after the lock. The lock works the other way from a 120-day clock, because the record you chose becomes permanent at your death instead of disappearing after months of inactivity.

The Afterlife.ai™ Twin puts the same Persona to work while you live. Your twin answers in the first person, under your name and photo, on three doors, which are your own website, an API and AI assistants, and visitors who speak to your twin hear your own cloned voice. Your twin replies in each visitor's language, you read every conversation your twin has, and you can pause any door at any time. Afterlife.ai™ Twins keep answering after Executor Lock™ by default, so the people who relied on your answers can keep asking.

Consider an illustrative example, not a real customer. Marcus, a 46-year-old software founder in Austin, asks Grok about code, contracts and hiring most nights, and none of those conversations will reach his co-founder or his kids. He builds a Persona over a month of evening sessions, switches on his Afterlife.ai™ Twin on his company's site to answer the questions his team asks him every week, and names his co-founder and his wife as executors. His Grok account will lapse on SpaceXAI's schedule, and his twin will keep answering in his words, under the rules he set. For the ownership side, read who owns your AI twin after you die, and for the risk of an AI built without consent, read about Meta's patent for an AI that keeps acting as a user who has died.

Executor Lock™ hands control of your Persona and your twin to the people you named, only after a verified death, and seals your Persona so nobody can change who you are. SpaceXAI's terms name nobody, and Executor Lock™ names everyone in advance.

1. You name the people. Your executors and Trusted Contacts each accept the Executor Lock™ Agreement while you are alive.

2. A report comes with evidence. After your death, an executor or a Trusted Contact uploads a death certificate, a funeral notice or similar proof.

3. Software and a person check it. Automated analysis reads the evidence, and then a person reviews it before anything changes.

4. Seven days of cooling-off pass. Every executor can dispute the report, and you can cancel a false report with proof of life.

5. The snapshot is sealed. Every memory is sealed as it stood that day, tamper-evident, with nothing pruned or re-weighted.

6. Your release rules apply. Your choices for photos, memories and live conversation take effect for the people you named.

Section 8.3 of our Terms of Service makes the lock permanent and irreversible, and short-term memories and big life events can still reach your Persona after the lock. For the full mechanics, read how Executor Lock™ works.

Why Idy built the hard part first. Every AI assistant gives the living a way to download and delete, and none offers a verified handover for the dead, because a handover is a different product with harder problems, which are proving a specific person died, proving a specific living person was chosen by them, and waiting long enough for a false claim to fail. Idy, the company behind Afterlife.ai™, spent its first years on exactly those problems, together with who controls your likeness while you live, who may see what, and how consent is recorded so the software obeys it. Executor Lock™ is the result, built on technology covered by 78 patents pending that include verifying a death before control changes hands, handing authority to a named executor, sealing a memory record that becomes permanent at the handover, and keeping a Persona the same person when AI models change. Idy has also filed two international applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, so the protection reaches beyond one country. Because the handover was built first, one Idy twin can work as you while you live, keep answering while you are away, and pass to the people you named when you die.

A Persona starts free with no card, and the Afterlife.ai™ Twin comes with Afterlife Pro at $59.99 a month or $599 a year, in US dollars. The free build includes Executor Lock™ setup, so you can name your executor today and switch on your twin when you are ready.

The yearly Afterlife Pro price saves $120.88 against twelve monthly payments, and twins are for adults 18 and over. Persona Video makes video messages in your own face and voice from one 30-second recording, and the first video is free. For every detail, read every Afterlife.ai™ plan and price, and for the product, read about the Afterlife.ai™ Twin.

Open Grok's Data Controls tonight and download your data, then remove every share link you no longer want at grok.com/share-links and delete the conversations you would not want read. If you used Grok inside X, repeat the clean-up in X's settings. Write one line in your estate file about what should happen to the account, and tell your executor where the downloaded file lives. Then decide what of you should outlast a 120-day clock, and start building that version on purpose.

1. Build your Persona free, no card

2. Name your executor

3. Switch on your Afterlife.ai™ Twin

We read SpaceXAI's consumer terms (September 11, 2026), privacy policy (August 24, 2026), consumer FAQ and 2025 CCPA transparency report, and X's Help Center pages on deceased users and inactive accounts, in a browser on October 2, 2026, alongside the Forbes and Fortune reporting on shared links, the text of GDPR Recital 27 and Article 12, and California Civil Code section 1798.130. The assistant table draws on each company's help pages, read the same day. This page is general information about how Grok works, written for Grok users and families in every country.

• what happens to your X (Twitter) account when you die

• what happens to your ChatGPT memories when you die

• what happens to your Gemini history when you die

• who controls your identity after you die

• the Afterlife.ai™ Twin

• how Executor Lock™ works