Digital Death and Immortality

The ‘Digital Death and Immortality’ project team are working to develop a philosophically-informed ethical approach for managing the ‘digital remains’ of internet users who have died.

In the 21^st century, death has an unavoidably digital dimension, including in the so-called “digital remains” that we leave behind when we die. How to deal with these digital remains has been a significant question for individuals, governments, and corporations alike. Now, emerging artificial intelligence technologies have made it possible to reuse and interact with these digital remains. ‘Ghostbots’ or ‘deathbots’ – interactive AI agents designed to mimic people who have died – are no longer science fiction, but an increasingly visible commercial reality.

These technologies offers new ways of commemorating the dead and for managing grief, and potentially for managing the practical affairs of the dead long after they have passed. Yet these technologies also threaten to exploit the dead, and to change our relationship to them in troubling ways. How are we to live with these digital ghosts? Do we have a right to reanimate the dead in this way, and under what conditions?

Expected outcomes of the project include guidance for the ethical use of these technologies and policy recommendations for regulating the reuse of digital remains and helping to articulate the uses, limits, and dangers of digital reanimation.