Recreating a dead family member using AI might have seemed like something from a sci‑fi horror movie just a few years ago, but it’s becoming an increasingly real issue. We’ve seen one programmer use OpenAI’s GPT‑3 to recreate the voice and personality of their deceased fiancée. Meanwhile, mainstream tools like the AI companion app Replika have been used to create chatbots based on the personalities of dead friends.
We’re also seeing the likeness of dead celebrities appear in commercially released movies, including the AI-generated voice of TV chef Anthony Bourdain in a documentary about his own life.
Now, legal scholar Victoria Haneman is arguing that dead people’s estates should have the right to digital deletion—to protect against “digital resurrection” and give them “the right to be dead.” In a paper first published in the Boston College Law Review and spotted by The Register, Haneman argues that “the intersection of death, technology, and privacy law has remained relatively ignored until recently.”
Haneman, a professor at the University of Georgia School of Law, discussed how existing laws remain deficient and inconsistent when it comes to the issue of AI resurrection. For example, she points out that the right to publicity, which allows people to sue in cases of unauthorized commercial use of a person’s name, image, or likeness, only covers the dead in about 25 states. Even so, the right to publicity only covers commercial use—for example, if a chatbot based on a dead person was sold or used in a movie.
Haneman also points to limitations of US privacy law, noting that only a few states criminalize defamation and libel of the dead, such as Idaho, Nevada, and Oklahoma.
There is existing legislation covering old social media accounts, like the Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA), which allows family members or trustees to gain access to old social accounts. But this legislation doesn’t outlaw data scraping based on a dead person’s online footprint, according to Haneman.
In addition, the California Delete Act provides consumers with the right to request that their data be deleted, but has “uncertain application to the deceased.”
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“Death is a legally significant event giving rise to different interests and entitlements, and the deceased user should not be an afterthought for big tech or policymakers,” added Haneman.
The issue of “digital resurrection” is definitely picking up more attention in the mainstream. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Hollywood star Samuel L. Jackson told future actors to cross out the “in perpetuity” clauses in their contracts when discussing how actors may now be asked to submit complete digital scans of their faces and bodies.
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About Will McCurdy
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