Attempto! 02/2023: Digital Afterlife

In June 2022, Marina Smith died at the age of 87. But at her funeral, she seemed very much alive. The mourners were even able to talk to her – more precisely: with her digital avatar. The recently deceased – co-founder of a Holocaust memorial in Nottinghamshire, UK – attended her own memorial service as a video hologram. Her posthumous avatar was based on camera footage taken during her lifetime and answers to 250 questions about her biography given before she passed away.

The avatar was produced by her son’s start-up company Story-File, which previously created interactive holograms of Holocaust survivors for the Shoah Foundation of the University of Southern California. The posthumous digital avatar of Marina Smith stands for a trend that is just beginning to emerge in the USA, Great Britain and some East Asian countries with companies specializing in offering a digital afterlife.

The Digital Afterlife Industry (DAI) includes small start-ups and large data companies. It promises interaction with the deceased via communication platforms, chatbots or avatars. With this technology, Elvis could swing his hips from beyond the grave or a deceased grandmother could read stories to her grandchildren.

Posthumous life in digital spaces raises profound questions: What influence will such developments have on how we handle death and grief in the future? How do they relate to the dignity of the deceased and the need for reverence and respect? Will digital technology affect religion? How can the rights of the deceased and survivors be protected against the commercial interests of the digital afterlife industry? And how is all this compatible with data protection and privacy?

The Edilife project of the International Center for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW) at the University of Tübingen is considering these questions. Although the digital afterlife is in its infancy and has barely gained a foothold in Germany, this isn’t seen as a problem.

“We don’t want to start thinking about ethical perspectives after the worst has already happened. Instead, we want to create public awareness of potential issues in good time and give recommendations for ethical policy,” says philosopher Jessica Heesen, who coordinates the project together with theologist Regina Ammicht Quinn.

The project also aims to explore how the concept of digital afterlife affects different areas of society and which moral and religious attitudes it might encounter. Social scientist Matthias Meitzler conducted extensive interviews with mourners and grief counselors, including clergy, psychologists, and undertakers. Many initially reacted to the topic in surprise although a few had already encountered the concept of a digital afterlife.

“For some, the interview reinforced their initial rejection, others took a wait-and-see attitude,” reports Meitzler. “Most respondents reacted with reservation; many found the idea of posthumous avatars rather creepy.” Beliefs of contacting the deceased through a spiritual medium or reincarnation must also play a role. “In a way, in the Digital Afterlife Industry, we are dealing with a secularized, data-based form of afterlife concepts.”

Whether skepticism will continue in society is an open question for the research team: The majority of those who are currently facing death and grief belong to the older generation. Their lives are not yet as digitalized as a younger generation who grew up with the Internet and social networks. Once digital natives grow older, the concept of digital afterlife could find more acceptance, and perhaps even become part of mourning practices, like visiting graves or keeping photographs of the deceased.

However, Jessica Heesen draws attention to a crucial difference: Dialog with an avatar goes far beyond the projection of individual thoughts and feelings onto objects of remembrance. Interactions with avatars of the deceased can develop a life of their own, blurring the boundaries between this world and the hereafter in the mourners’ consciousness.

“Digital avatars could act like a painkiller in preventing the bereaved from accepting and dealing with their loss. Grief counselors pointed this out in our interviews,” says Heesen. Constant smartphone contact with digital avatars prevents the grieving process from reaching its true completion.

This trend could increase as artificial intelligence becomes more prevalent. Holograms such as Marina Smith’s are still based on recordings the original person actually made. However, machine-learning AI systems based on ChatGPT quickly develop independent dialog. What if a grandfather avatar starts insulting family members, spreading accusations or inciting hate speech?

“We have to consider the consequences such risks may have for historical tradition and the culture of remembrance,” says Meitzler. Stalin or Hitler avatars spreading propaganda on the Internet as “contemporary witnesses” or “advisors” are by no means inconceivable. So far, there is not even a registration obligation for such creatures and it is also unclear how it would be enforced.

Not only here does Heesen see considerable need for regulation on the part of the legislator: For example, there are no rules on who can create avatars of the deceased and when. Digital avatars can also be produced without prior consent of the deceased. “Posthumous personality rights must be adapted to this new situation”.

In future, people might be able to manage their digital estate by stating in their will whether a digital avatar may be created. The need for regulating the digital afterlife industry is being researched at the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology (SIT) in Darmstadt in partnership with the Tübingen researchers. A joint event is planned on the project’s completion in spring 2024 where results and recommendations will be presented to politicians and the public.

The project “Ethics, Law and Security in the Digital Afterlife (Edilife)” investigates ethical issues with regard to methods of digital posthumous avatars and is funded by the BMBF (July 2022 – February 2024).

It focuses on issues such as grief and reverence in this socio-technological context; possibilities of manipulation and abuse; data protection and the rights of data subjects in relation to commercial interests.

Team: Professor Regina Ammicht Quinn, PD Dr. Jessica Heesen, Matthias Meitzler, Dr. Martin Hennig; Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology (SIT).

Text: Wolfgang Krischke