# The Making of Digital Ghosts: Designing Ethical AI Afterlives

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.20094 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.20094/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 4 of its 67 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Nov 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Creating a Large Language Model of a Philosopher](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.01339/) (2023)
- [Generative Ghosts: Anticipating Benefits and Risks of AI Afterlives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01662/) (2024)
- [Digital Dybbuks and Virtual Golems: The Ethics of Digital Duplicates in Holocaust Testimony](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.01369/) (2025)
- [Engineering Privacy by Design: Are engineers ready to live up to the challenge?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.04579/) (2020)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Advances in artificial intelligence now make it possible to simulate the dead through chatbots, voice clones, and video avatars trained on a person's digital traces. These "digital ghosts" are moving from fiction to commercial reality, reshaping how people mourn and remember. This paper offers a conceptual and ethical analysis of AI-mediated digital afterlives. We define what counts as a digital ghost, trace their rise across personal, commercial, and institutional contexts, and identify core ethical tensions around grief and well-being, truthfulness and deception, consent and posthumous privacy, dignity and misrepresentation, and the commercialization of mourning. To analyze these challenges, we propose a nine-dimensional taxonomy of digital afterlife technologies and, building on it, outline the features of an ethically acceptable digital ghost: premortem intent, mutual consent, transparent and limited data use, clear disclosure, restricted purposes and access, family or estate stewardship, and minimal behavioral agency. We argue for targeted regulation and professional guidelines to ensure that digital ghosts can aid remembrance without slipping into forms of deception.