AI and the Afterlife

Motivation

Recent advances in machine learning (particularly the advent of increasingly capable, general, and multimodal generative AI models) raise profound questions that we must grapple with as a society over the coming years. These technologies will pervade, and potentially transform, a wide array of socio-technical practices. There is already widespread discussion of how AI might transform diverse aspects of modern society such as education, employment, entertainment, scientific inquiry, and military strategy. Practices around death and dying are an oft-overlooked area of cultural importance that stands to be profoundly impacted by this changing technological landscape.

AI technologies are likely to impact an array of existing practices (and give rise to a host of novel ones) around end-of-life planning, remembrance, and legacy in ways that will have profound legal, economic, emotional, and religious ramifications. Already, we are beginning to see reports describing individuals’ attempts to use AI to interactively memorialize loved ones, the use of AI to posthumously complete unfinished creative works, and start-up companies professing to offer AI-based digital afterlife services.

At this critical moment of technological change, there is an opportunity for the HCI community to shape the discourse on this important topic, much as HCI scholarship helped shape (and understand) practices regarding digital legacy and social media. We advocate for a value-sensitive and community-centered approach to designing interfaces, interactions, and systems that will empower people to shape their digital legacies.