Governance of the Digital Afterlife
The ‘Digital Afterlife’ encapsulates concepts, such as, ‘Digital Immortality’ and ‘Digital Legacy’. These concepts are not formally defined but there is recognition within legal, academic and palliative care circles that they exist and are often premised on the data people leave behind after they have died. This raises questions on whether this data should be the subject of some degree of governance, and if so, through which actors or stakeholders, and what types of governance mechanisms.
Governance can mean formal legislation, regulation, policies, guidance, or the control coded into technologies that manage our lives – and perhaps now, our post-life. Thanks to technological advances in machine learning and generative Artificial Intelligence, there are new developments, including public experimentation and corporate investment, in areas such as synthetic text, audio, video and 3D-based digital persona for use in social, cultural and business settings. This can also enable the creation of post-mortem personas capable of interacting with the living, which might exist, adapt and evolve over extended periods. What impact could this have on an individual’s ‘Digital Legacy’, e.g. their posthumous identity? The social, economic, and legal ramifications of such technologies suggest a need for governance, but the case for this, examination of the scope for, and potential forms of, governance are still nascent.
This presentation showcases interim results of semi-structured interviews with three groups of experts associated with technology, governance and death and dying. The aim was to ascertain whether there was an appetite for governing the possible risks and harms arising from the ‘Digital Afterlife’, and if so, to explore the potential options. Over 60 experts were interviewed across North America, Europe, Middle East, the Far East and Australia: they included cyber security architects, special effects creators, lawyers, policymakers, thanatologists and celebrants .
An overall consensus from the interviewees is that there is a need for governance but there were different opinions on how to achieve this. The presentation will highlight emerging themes from each group which provide insights on ways in which the ‘Digital Afterlife’ – or alternatively, the ‘grief tech’ industry – could be governed in future. Despite the divergences between the groups, many concerns overlap; the most common of which was minimising the potential for exploitation of the bereaved.
This study is part of a PhD, incorporating ‘Responsible Innovation’: a framework that encourages dialogue between researchers and the public regarding the impact of emerging technologies.
About Khadiza Laskor
Khadiza is a third-year PhD Student at the University of Bristol’s Cyber Security Centre for Doctoral Training Programme. The programme promotes an interdisciplinary approach in researching themes associated with trust, identity, privacy and security.
Aspects of all four have been found within Khadiza’s research thus far, particularly identity and privacy. Her PhD – ‘Governance in the Digital Afterlife’ – is an inductive case study exploring the possibility of anticipatory governance on ‘grief tech’. Other studies include a systematic literature review ascertaining the framing of the ‘Digital Afterlife’ and an Islamic perspective of ‘Digital Immortality’.
