Posted 8/8/2025

Technology companies are currently providing services that can digitally resurrect the deceased. Through archived text, audio, or video, they will create an AI-generated avatar or other communications tool that represents the deceased. For some, this is an innovation in grief work that is therapeutic. Supporters of the efforts to resurrect the dead digitally say that it provides emotional comfort and keeps memories alive. For people dealing with the sudden or traumatic loss of a loved one, hearing a familiar voice, even if it is machine-generated, can be comforting. The better and more realistic generative AI becomes, the faster these simulative scenes will approach conversations with the deceased that are indistinguishable from real conversations. Critics warn that digital immortality will distort our memories, complicate our grief, and, at worst, violate the deceased's prior consent. Did the deceased person ever give consent to become a digital echo? Most of the time there are no laws implicated where consent must be obtained. Ethicists will warn that the new technology will create a representation of presence that can keep people emotionally stuck. Moreover, there is a commodification angle. There will be services that monetize grief, charging you so that you can continue “living memories” with a subscription service. What is someone’s identity after death? Who owns it? Legal scholars are trying to figure all that out. And there are data security issues. Someone’s digitally resurrected identity can be hacked or violated, and then their likeness can be used in unflattering and untruthful ways. We have already seen deepfakes cause real harm in the world; what is stopping a bad actor from then creating a hack or altering the likeness of a deceased public figure or family member? While the intention of this work may be about facilitating empathetic healing for the loss of a loved one, occupying the space of artificial intelligence over the existential divide of life and death introduces ethical, personal privacy, and emotional well-being questions. The idea of resurrected identity may shift and change along with artificial intelligence, but as a society, are we negotiating a similar continuum about how we remember the deceased and when it becomes a matter of artificially extending someone’s existence?