Image Credit: Image copyright J. F. Morie, Generated with Leonardo AI and hand worked in Photoshop
The notion of preserving one’s legacy has evolved from written memoirs and photographs to digital simulations that recreate a person’s likeness, voice, and even personality. Advancements in spatial media, AI, and digital capture technologies have introduced the concept of virtual immortality, enabling a deceased person’s presence to persist in digital form. We sat down with SIGGRAPH 2024 Courses contributors and experts in AI, immersive media, and digital legacy — Gregory Panos, Keram Malicki-Sanchez, and Dr. Jaquelyn Ford Morie — to discuss the evolution of digital afterlife technologies, their potential, and the ethical dilemmas they raise.
SIGGRAPH: How have advancements in spatial media and AI transformed our understanding of digital legacy?
Gregory Peter Panos (GP): In the past, digital legacy meant preserving photos, videos, and written records. Today, spatial media and AI have expanded the possibilities of posthumous digital presence through 3D scanning, voice cloning, and AI-driven avatars.
Spatial Capture & 3D Reconstruction
Advances in photogrammetry, LiDAR, and volumetric capture allow for the detailed and affordable preservation of spaces, people, and artifacts.
AI-Driven Lifelike Avatars
AI can now reconstruct a person’s face, voice, and speech patterns from minimal data. Just a few seconds of voice recording are enough to generate a convincing “deepfake”, compared to the thousands previously required.
Taken together, these have created the potential for “Virtual Immortalizatity “— interactive digital simulations of deceased individuals.
Conversational AI for Memory Preservation
By training AI chat models on personal interactions, individuals can create digital counterparts that mimic their speech patterns and responses. This allows for posthumous conversations between the living and a simulated loved one.
Can these tools offer a new way to remember and interact with the deceased, blurring the lines between past and present, and what are the implications of such lifelike representations?
SIGGRAPH: How can technologies like photogrammetry, LiDAR, and AI simulations contribute to creating realistic digital avatars or “de-aged” digital doubles?
GP: The creation of realistic “de-aged” or virtual avatars relies on a combination of high-resolution capture, AI-driven rendering, and behavioral modeling.
Photogrammetry & LiDAR
These technologies allow for 3D modeling of real-world objects and environments, making it possible to capture precise facial structures, body posture, and physical features.
AI Speech Cloning & Personality Emulation
AI voice models can now synthesize speech with emotion and personality, cadence, and nuance, creating believable dialogue experiences with the digital recreation of a person.
Motion Capture & AI Expression Mapping
Digital avatars require lifelike movement and expressions. Technologies like markerless motion capture and machine learning-driven facial animation enhance realism.
Psychological & Emotional Impact
These technologies present both comfort and risk for those grieving. While some find solace in “Griefbots”, others argue that they might prolong grief or create emotional dependency. There is also a concern about digital poltergeists — unwanted AI representations of the deceased appearing without family consent and that could be exploited for ill-gotten gains.
This raises a profound question: Will these interactions help people heal, or are they preventing them from truly moving on? Gregory Panos shared an anecdote, “My AI Mom calls me every Sunday, and I look forward to our conversations.”
SIGGRAPH: What are the ethical implications of using AI and digital technology to simulate a person’s likeness after death?
GP: While digital legacy offers opportunities for preservation, it also raises critical ethical concerns about consent, ownership, and manipulation.
The Right to Be Forgotten
Just as people have a say in what happens to their physical remains, they should have the same control over their digital afterlife. Some may not want to exist digitally, yet they might be recreated without consent.
Who Owns the Digital You?
Should your family, estate, or a company own your digital likeness? Do we need post-mortem data rights in our wills? Without clear protections, unethical parties could steal, misuse, or monetize personal data.
The Exploitation of Digital Replicas
If AI avatars become commonplace, what prevents corporations from packaging and selling someone’s likeness in ways they never approved of? Could celebrities be digitally revived for films without permission?
Psychological & Societal Risks
- Addiction: People might become emotionally dependent on AI simulations of their loved ones.
- Distortion of Memory: AI recreations might misrepresent the real person, altering how they are remembered.
- Commercialization of Grief: AI-driven legacy services could profit from emotional vulnerabilities.
Malicki-Sanchez also discussed the school of Object Oriented Ontology, and viewing these effigies from a non-anthropocentric view. Ultimately we are dealing with things. What captures the essence of a person?
SIGGRAPH: How can legal cases (Fred Astaire, Frank Zappa) inform our understanding of posthumous rights? What protections are needed?
GP: The Vivian Maier case illustrates this risk. The late photographer never intended to share her work, yet her personal archives were posthumously commercialized. Will digital personalities face the same fate?
Next we will explore some landmark legal cases: Legal battles over posthumous likeness rights provide insight into future digital identity laws.
Key Legal Precedents
Fred Astaire’s Likeness Protection
Astaire’s estate successfully prevented unauthorized use of his image, setting a precedent for celebrity digital rights.
Frank Zappa’s Posthumous Use Case
Zappa’s estate fought to protect his music and image, highlighting ownership disputes over intellectual property and use as a posthumous holographic performer.
Marilyn Monroe’s Estate vs. CMG Worldwide
Monroe’s heirs sought posthumous control of her image, reinforcing the idea that a person’s likeness doesn’t belong to the public after death.
Emerging Laws & Protections
To prevent AI exploitation, new regulations are being proposed:
- The “No AI Fraud Act”: Protects individuals from unauthorized AI-generated likenesses.
- The “Elvis Act”: Ensures control over voice and image rights after death.
- The Digital Replica Contract Act: Requires explicit consent before using an AI-generated likeness in media.
Misinformed Consent & AI Identity Theft
GANs and Gen AI allow for representations that can manipulate public perception. Laws must address:
- Unauthorized AI replication: Preventing bad actors from creating fake versions of people.
- Right to opt-out: Ensuring that individuals can prevent their likeness from being digitally replicated.
What Comes Next?
Some questions we consider include:
- Who enforces digital rights? Endless litigation over posthumous identity could become the norm.
- How do we prevent exploitation? AI technology moves faster than laws — ethical AI use policies are urgently needed.
- Do we want to exist forever? Some may welcome a digital afterlife, while others demand the right to be forgotten.
The Future of Digital Legacy
We are at the dawn of AI-driven immortality, where people may persist as digital echoes long after they pass. Whether this is a gift or a curse depends on how we navigate the ethical, legal, and psychological challenges ahead.
Technology can preserve memory and presence, but it must be used responsibly. The real question is: How do we honor the dead without violating their autonomy?
As AI advances, digital legacy will become a reality for all of us. Now is the time to decide how we want to be remembered, if we want to be remembered at all.
Gregory Peter Panos is a futurist, visionary, writer, strategic consultant, educator, philosopher and evangelist in the field of Virtual & Augmented Reality, Human Simulation, 3D Object Scanning, Motion & Facial Capture, Live Performance Animation, 3D Photo-realistic Human Avatar / Character development for experiential Simulation / user interaction.
Greg has worked with NASA / Rockwell using real-time simulation to visualize the Space Station, and with organizations in the CGI / VFX industry for motion pictures / TV, Virtual Reality, Virtual Actors and Performance Animation. He Co-founded the “Performance Animation Society”, was twice chair, and twice co-chair, of SIGGRAPH (Los Angeles Chapter), and he authored the “Virtual Reality Sourcebook”
Greg has raised consciousness and created community and collaboration in the fascinating area of human simulation through the creation of the “Persona Foundation” where he, and others, enthusiastically demonstrate state-of-the-art developments emerging all around us and at conferences, events and in the media.
Keram Malicki-Sanchez founded both the VRTO Spatial Media World Conference & Expo, and the & FIVARS Festival of International Virtual & Augmented Reality Stories. He’s a creative development consultant to a wide variety of tech companies, and founder of Constant Change Media Group Inc., a 360 media company. He is also the editor-in-chief of IndieGameReviewer.com, and author of essays around spatial media for several books including the Handbook on the Global Impact of Immersive Media.
He won Creator of the Year at the 2022 Poly Awards, was named one of the Top 100 Original Voices in XR in 2021, and contributed to the 2022 PEW Research report on the Metaverse in 2040 Augmented Reality Stories. He is the Creative Director of the Canadian Hispanic-Latin American Virtual Museum, and an instructor at UCLA Extension in Southern California teaching Spatial Media Design with Blender, Introduction to Game Development with Godot, and other topics.
Dr. Jacquelyn Ford Morie, a pioneering Virtual Reality artist, crafted early techniques for delivering emotional VR experiences. With advanced degrees in both Fine Art & Computer Science, she has been at the forefront of technology since the 1980s. In 1999 Morie helped start the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, where she served as senior scientist contributing to AI-driven virtual human projects. She played a key role in advising the ANA Avatar XPRIZE, advocating for remote controlled robotic avatars. Through her company All These Worlds, she consults and builds immersive environments for diverse clients, including NASA.
