Chatbots and avatars that imitate deceased people go beyond the idea of preserving memories, raising a more complex question: Is it permissible to digitally reconstruct a person’s identity and use it after their death without their prior consent? These systems, also known as “griefbots,” “deadbots,” or “digital life after death,” rely on large amounts of personal data to imitate communication styles and some aspects of a person’s biography and personality.
This use promises to provide a space for remembering and expressing emotions, but at the same time raises concerns about exploiting the deceased person’s data, the impact of interacting with a digital version of them on the grieving process, and the limits of responsibility when the platform produces harmful or misleading content.
Consent Is the First Point of Disagreement
Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basinska, a researcher at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge, believes that obtaining a person’s consent before their death is one of the most important ethical questions in this field. Explicit consent may alleviate part of the problem, while creating a “digital twin” of a deceased person without that consent remains contested, even when the motive is to comfort their family members.
The problem concerns not only consent, but also extends to determining which data may be used, how it is protected, and the possibility of misuse. Nowaczyk-Basinska warns that commercial companies could turn representations of the deceased into a new advertising channel, such as displaying targeted advertisements using the deceased person’s personality or style, potentially turning “digital immortality” into a commercial product lacking clear boundaries.
She also believes that children dealing with the loss of a family member constitute an extremely sensitive group and should not be exposed to these technologies before their psychological effects are better understood.
Experts Do Not Offer a Single Verdict
Not all specialists agree that prior consent should be required in every case. Darcy Harris, a professor of thanatology and bereavement at King’s University College, affiliated with Western University in Canada, believes that a personal chatbot created to help people who have lost someone dear may not necessarily require the deceased person’s consent.
Harris, however, stresses the need to establish clear limits to protect personal information, as well as the importance of systems automatically reporting conversations that could be harmful. This position reveals an important distinction between the question of permitting the creation of the tool and the question of the safeguards that should govern its use after it is created.
Christopher Hall, the chief executive officer of the government-supported organization Grief Australia, warns against some platforms marketing these services as an opportunity to “never say goodbye.” He points out that this messaging may increase the technology’s appeal, but it may also increase attachment to it or make it more difficult to accept the reality of death.
What Changes in Practice?
The risks become clearer when the deceased person’s wishes regarding their digital legacy are unknown. Hall cites the case of Joshua Barbeau in Canada, who spoke through the Project December platform with a chatbot designed around the personality of his late fiancée, Jessica. He believes the example illustrates the technology’s two contradictory sides: it may give some people room to express memories and emotional attachment, but it may increase a sense of loss in others or hinder adaptation to death.
These tools can also lead to disagreements among family members over whether to create them or how to use them, in addition to potentially causing trauma for some users. Hall therefore calls on companies to make clear that the tool is a simulation, not the deceased person, and that it is not a legal entity, while providing consent mechanisms, privacy protection, age limits, and clear options to delete or discontinue the service.
A Regulatory Gap Leaves Decisions to Companies
The experts featured in the article agree that current rules have not kept pace with the expansion of artificial intelligence applications. Nowaczyk-Basinska says that the world does not yet have sufficient national or global rules to regulate “digital immortality,” giving producers room to make discretionary decisions about how to develop and operate these services.
Regulatory and political bodies have begun to take notice of the issue; Nowaczyk-Basinska said that she and her colleague Tomasz Hollanek submitted recommendations to politicians in the United Kingdom regarding robots that imitate the deceased. However, the article does not present an effective regulatory framework or a unified standard that can be applied internationally.
certi.news reading: The importance of this issue lies not only in artificial intelligence’s ability to imitate the style of a deceased person, but also in shifting a sensitive decision from the sphere of family and memory to commercial platforms that manage highly private data. The experts’ views show that the practical questions requiring resolution are: Did the deceased leave clear instructions? Who has the right to make the decision in their absence? How can the platform prevent manipulation, advertising, or harmful conversations? And when can the user stop the experience or delete it? The article does not provide final answers to these questions, but it makes clear that their absence is not a technical detail, but a governance gap affecting privacy, mental health, and family rights.