Last week, Business Insider reported on a Meta patent describing a system that would simulate a user\u2019s social media activity after their death.The patent imagines a world where you\u2019d be able to chat with a deceased friend\u2019s Facebook or Instagram account after their death, and have a large language model simulate their posting or chatting behavior.\u00a0Meta first filed the patent in 2023, but the patent made headlines this week because of its dystopian implications. And while Meta told Business Insider that \u201cwe have no plans to move forward with this example,\u201d a recently published paper from researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Leipzig University shows that generative AI is increasingly being used to puppeteer the likeness of dead people. The paper argues that the practice raises \u201curgent legal and ethical questions around posthumous appropriation, ownership, work, and control.\u201d\u201cMeta\u2019s patent is big, and might even be a turning point,\u201d Tom Divon, the lead author on Artificially alive: An exploration of AI resurrections and spectral labor modes in a postmortal society, told me in an email. \u201cWhat makes it different is the scale. In our research, most of the AI resurrections we examined were quite bespoke, projects started by families, advocacy groups, museums, or startups, usually tied to very specific emotional, political, or commercial contexts. Even when they existed as apps, they were optional and limited, not built into the core structure of a platform. Meta\u2019s proposal feels different because it imagines posthumous simulation as something woven directly into social media infrastructure.\u201dUsing technology to animate the dead or simulate communication with them is not new, but the practice is becoming more common because generative AI tools are more accessible. Divon and co-author Christian Pentzold analyzed more than 50 real-world cases from the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia where AI was used to recreate deceased people\u2019s voices, likeness, and personality, to see how and why technology was used this way.\u00a0They say that the examples they studied fell into three categories:Spectacularization: \u201cthe digital re-staging of famous figures for entertainment.\u201d For example, a live tour of an AI-generated Whitney Houston.Sociopoliticization: \u201cthe reanimation of victims of violence or injustice for political or commemorative purposes.\u201d We recently covered an example of this with an AI-generated dead victim of a road rage incident giving testimony in court.\u00a0Mundanization: \u201cthe most intimate and fast-growing mode, in which everyday people use chatbots or synthetic media to \u2018talk\u2019 with deceased parents, partners, or children, keeping relationships alive through daily digital interaction.\u201dThe paper raises questions about this growing practice more than it proposes solutions. How does the notion of identity change when multiple versions of oneself can exist simultaneously, and what safeguards do we need to prevent exploitation of people after their death?\u201cThe legal and ethical frameworks governing issues such as consent, privacy, and end-of-life decision-making demand reevaluation to accommodate the challenges posed by afterlife personhood,\u201d the paper says. \u201cIn particular, to date, there is no clear line for governing the intricate intertwining of an individual\u2019s data traces and GenAI applications.\u201dDivon told me that thinking about these issues is especially relevant when it comes to Meta\u2019s patent. \u201cSpectral labor describes how the dead can be made to \u2018work\u2019 again through the extraction and reanimation of their data, likeness, and affect. At small scale, this already raises ethical concerns. But at platform scale, we think it risks turning posthumous presence into an ongoing source of engagement, content, and value within digital economies […] Meta\u2019s patent makes us wonder, will individuals be given the ability to define their post-life boundaries while still alive? Will there be mechanisms akin to a digital DNR [do not resuscitate]?\u201dDivon explained that the current legal frameworks are not well equipped to address this technology because \u201cdigital remains\u201d are typically approached either as property to be inherited or privacy interests to be protected. AI turns those materials into something interactive that can change and generate revenue in the present. Legislators, he said, should focus on getting explicit and informed \u201cpre-death\u201d consent requirements for posthumous AI simulation. Some laws that address this issue are already in progress.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cAt its core, we believe the primary concern here centers on authorization,\u201d he said. \u201cMost individuals have not provided explicit, informed consent for their digital traces to power interactive posthumous agents. If such systems become embedded in platform infrastructure, inaction could quietly function as implicit agreement […] We believe it is crucial to ask whether individuals should continue to generate social and economic value after death without having meaningfully agreed to that form of use.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"