#digital-afterlife

#digital-afterlife

When Justin Harrison got the call in 2022 telling him that his mother would likely die within the day, he didn't panic. He got on a plane to Singapore, where he was scheduled to present at a conference about his start-up, You, Only Virtual, a platform on which users can chat with AI versions of their dead loved ones, and which Justin believes can ultimately eliminate grief as a human experience. He learned about his mother's death while flying over the Pacific.

Her digital seance was not cathartic, nor did it give her any closure. After an emotional two hours of hearing her father's voice from the machine, which she dubbed Dadbot, she ended the conversation, never to interact with it again. "Saying goodbye to Dadbot was surprisingly hard," she says. "When I finished and turned it off, I spent the rest of the day feeling like I had done something wrong."

Generative AI is blurring the lines between life and death, raising concerns around the digital afterlife of the deceased and the security of their digital identities.