Imagine receiving a video call from your late grandparents. Exciting? Horrifying? Or just no comments? I know this sounds ridiculous, but with the birth of artificial intelligence (AI), everything seems possible. We are already making avatars, photos and videos of each other with the help of AI, so death may no longer be the end of the conversation. Welcome to the world of Digital Afterlife!
The Digital Afterlife refers to the continued existence of a person’s digital presence after their physical death. This means that the person remains online and logged in while in reality he/she is long gone. This includes everything from social media profiles, emails, and cloud-stored photos to more advanced forms like AI-generated avatars, chatbots, or holograms that simulate the deceased’s personality and behaviour based on past experiences and new information given to it.
As AI is trying to erase the boundary between our online and offline existence, we must ask ourselves a question,
‘What happens when memories become chats, grief becomes downloadable, and the dead become data we can’t destroy? Are we preserving memories… or creating ghosts?’
The Concept and Technology That Brings The Dead Back
The Afterlife is a question has fascinated humans for thousands of years. Some civilisations believed that there is life after death, some believed it’s the end of a phase in the cycle of life and death, while some believed it's just the end and there’s nothing ahead.
The idea of Digital Afterlife didn’t begin with AI; it began with a question,
‘What happens to our online presence after we die? Will it shut down automatically or will it stay forever?’
This question was obvious because people started noticing that long after someone was gone, their social media accounts still remained active. You can even check for yourself right now, accounts of people who are already dead, unless their relatives have deactivated them.
The concept of Digital Afterlife was first published in a book, ‘Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything’ (2010) by Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell, which talked about a future where every moment of our life could be recorded online and replayed again and again. AI enthusiasts began experimenting with this idea of preserving the human mind digitally, giving it the term ‘AI Resurrection,’ which means your digital rebirth with the help of AI.
And today, we have dozens of companies set up to explore and provide afterlife chats and calls with our loved ones no longer alive. Some are:
- HereAfter AI
- StoryFile
- Project December
- Hanson Robotics
- MyWishes
In 2020, a few South Korean developers and artists recreated a digital version of a grieving mother’s dead daughter. They allowed the mother to talk to her daughter using virtual reality and say her final goodbyes. All this was recorded in a documentary called ‘Meeting You’, which you can listen to for yourselves.
But then comes the question: does this technology act as a healing tool, or does it risk increasing sorrow by making it harder to say goodbye?
The Emotional Trap
Sadness is never easy, but what happens when it has a Wi-Fi signal? As mentioned at the start, it either makes you excited or horrified. You desperately want to hear that final ‘I Love You’ or ‘Goodbye’, and you hear it. Now? It might feel like a gift and an emotionally disturbing moment at the same time.
- Repeated chats can make it harder to accept that someone is truly gone.
- Psychologists warn that it might affect the emotional and mental well-being of a person, forcing them into a loop of never-ending sadness.
- After all, it is AI and not the actual person. What if it says something that the person would never have said?
Even the concept of Digital Afterlife has an emotional tangle attached to it, a tension between love and loss, comfort and confusion. It can be a boon and a bane at the same time.
The Ethical Dilemma
These digital recreations of dead people may seem amusing, but they also raise issues of privacy, consent and control.
- Did they agree to live like this? Most people don’t decide on this, and it could be a loved one building your AI version without your knowledge. Now, is this remembering you or exploiting you?
- Who owns you, not technically, but virtually? Your voice, photos, videos, notes, avatars, and all that is yours, will it belong to your family, or the social media site you used or the company owning the site?
- You never know how your online presence will be used. Deepfakes, cropped photos, and AI clones can be used for manipulation. With you dead, hackers can use you for unethical practices.
Some governments are acknowledging the seriousness of this issue and making laws to safeguard you after death. Germany, for instance, has made a law stating that your digital accounts can be inherited by family members as property. However, the rest of the world is still far behind in this case, and as technology gets better, the issues only get harder.
Conclusion: When Goodbye Isn’t The End
What once was a fascinating mystery for our ancestors is now a reality just around the corner. With just a few clicks, a voice can return. A face can blink. A memory can speak. The dead can rise. Similar to the Game of Thrones!
For some, it offers peace, a chance to say what was never said. For others, it opens a door that never fully closes, an endless loop of grief that can terrify you. Because if death no longer means goodbye, then maybe the scariest question isn’t what comes after life, but what comes after death ends.
I shall leave you here with an intriguing question,
‘What would you say to someone you’ve lost if you had one last digital conversation?’