“Augmented Eternity”: Obituaries and Digital Enshrinement
Research: Daisy Wright
Originally published October 22, 2022
What happens to our social media platforms when we die? Today, the most commonly known digital tool available to those grieving a loved one are memorial pages for social media profiles. Facebook’s memorial page feature allows a loved one to take over the deceased’s profile when they die. This allows them to archive the content on the page without getting rid of it, so friends and family can look back on their online legacy. Most social media accounts allow families to submit proof of death to access similar features, at the very least allowing you to archive the accounts of the deceased.
Unfortunately, collecting the necessary documents to prove death and assume ownership of these accounts can be a frustrating and even lengthy process. As a result, many people have begun to include a digital section of their will that contains all of their passwords and online information to help loved ones get instant access to their accounts after their death. Apple’s iCloud allows users to add someone as a “legacy contact” who would be able to log in to their iCloud posthumously. These options allow people to hand-pick who they do or do not want to have access to their accounts — a crucial element of privacy.
Digital legacies are beginning to transcend what already existed before a person’s physical death, including the concept of “augmented eternity.” There is, however, a stark difference between an AI chatbot and a fully realized copy of someone’s consciousness — AI can create a very close reiteration of a person’s thoughts and behaviors, but it cannot create a replica of each individual neurotransmitter in your brain. Perhaps this may change when Millennials and Gen Z, who grew up alongside the Internet, are the eldest generations and have amassed billions of gigabytes of data, the AI will have considerably more data to pull from and mimic, but this is not yet a possibility as nobody has lived an entire lifetime on the Internet yet.
In theory, AI is able to not only emulate who this person was when they were alive, but expand upon their earthly existence and continue to grow within a digital afterlife — so are we headed towards a future where our biological life is merely the prologue to the rest of our (digital) lives?
Entertainment
In recent years the concept of an “augmented eternity” has become more than just a concept. Eugenia Kuyda, founder of the Russian AI startup Replika, created a chatbot replicating the demeanor of her friend that had recently passed away by feeding it old emails, texts, social media posts — a myriad of artifacts from his digital legacy. This allowed friends and family to “spend time” with their deceased loved one, and proved to be rather successful. This won’t create an exact replica of the person who has passed, but it may provide enough of a resemblance that it evokes some relief from the grief that those who have lost someone may certainly be feeling.
News and information
The digitization of the death industry began humbly, with websites functioning as one-stop-stops for families to write obituaries and distribute them to multiple news publications. This saves people from repeatedly rehashing their grief by writing and submitting obituaries to various different newspapers. Many of these services have expanded to include Facebook Ads, which allow loved ones to upload obituaries to the social media platform and then use different demographic information to target Facebook users who may have known the deceased.
Positioning
Digital afterlife may become just as commonplace as other traditional postmortem plans like cremation or burial, but it will require slightly more attention in one’s biological life. This is because it does require the relinquishing of an entire life’s worth of data to either complete strangers to input, or close family to review, and there should be a plan or set of standards in place to ensure that even in death, any given person’s right to privacy is respected. It is crucial to consider how this technology may evolve to become a part of daily life, especially as the digital world continues to grow and exist alongside us as we’re alive.
Additional resources
- Why You Should Believe in the Digital Afterlife | The Atlantic
- Pandemic Disrupted Historical Mortality Patterns, Caused Largest Jump in Deaths in 100 Years | Census.Gov
- New technology is forcing us to confront the ethics of bringing people back from the dead | Quartz
- How to arrange for your digital legacy | The Verge
