Dearly (Un)Departed: Why the Digital Resurrection of Children is Uniquely Morally Complex

Abstract: As technologists attempt to transcend mortality, the burgeoning Digital Afterlife Industry is valued at $100+ billion. Once deemed unobtainable, immortality in the form of highly sophisticated avatars is now accessible through a modest subscription. While “griefbots” and digital resurrection technologies raise significant ethical questions, their application to simulate deceased children occupies a distinctive moral territory that requires specialized bioethical consideration. This paper explores how the digital resurrection of children using generative artificial intelligence raises new questions regarding parental rights and responsibilities, their ability to provide posthumous informed consent for their data, and the child’s right to be forgotten. I analyze both the promissory discourse surrounding grief technologies and how they may, perversely, contribute to emotional alienation.

The digital resurrection of children presents a convergence of vulnerabilities that intensifies ethical concerns beyond adult-focused applications. Parental relationships with deceased children encompass dimensions of attachment and protection that endure beyond death, increasing sensitivity to technological interventions in the grieving process. Even when children lack a digital footprint, machine learning techniques can recognize and predict responses to infinite stimuli, effectively re-modeling children who never grew up. Simulated personas appear to foreclose a child’s right to an open future and cannot genuinely reflect their evolving identities. While an eternal connection with loved ones might seem appealing, I argue that digital afterlife advances a problematic discourse, where artificial intelligence is embraced as the meta-solution to ‘solve’ the meta-problem of death and grief. As custodians of memory, should the digital resurrection of children give us moral pause?

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Death of children, Parental responsibility and posthumous guardianship