Digital Eternity
Digital technology has enabled us to keep the memory of the deceased alive through videos and photographs that have been powerful tools to allow us to grieve and remember loved ones. Over recent years, the pandemic has left us feeling closer to loved ones than ever as it disrupted our normal lives. Social distancing was enforced preventing us to visit family and friends but also radically impacted the grieving process. With a lockdown in place to restrict the movement of the virus, many of us said our goodbyes over FaceTime, mourned together via Zoom, and lit virtual prayer candles on our phones or laptops.
In 2023, the technologies available at our disposal have allowed us to create new forms of posthumous digital presence. The Genealogy platform MyHeritage has created Deep Nostalgia, a deep fake tool that can animate the faces of departed loved ones in family photos. Web3 technologies have the potential to deliver an immersive experience with multisensory stimulation. Imagine being able to see, smell and feel their presence on your skin.
Our digital footprint can last forever on the internet, but we can preserve our conversations with those who have passed on and replicate them. With artificial intelligence, it can emulate the style through text messages, blog posts and 3 am tweets. Combined with deep fake technology, we can have chatbots that mimic someone no longer with us.
As technologies continue to develop and become more accessible, we will be able to create intelligent avatars of ourselves that will continue to live long after we have died. We the metaverse developing we could see our loved ones in the virtual universe where they will continue to exist for us to communicate with. For AI avatars to exist they rely on us to feed huge amounts of personal data accumulated through the course of our lives. For our digital selves to live on, the unfiltered beliefs and opinions we express today will need to be archived and used to build our true digital selves. We may need to start considering our digital footprint as what we do online will dictate how our digital selves will behaviour.
