Artificially alive
An exploration of AI resurrections and spectral labor modes in a postmortal society
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12656361 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tom Divon (0000-0002-7034-615X, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, corresponding author), Christian Pentzold (0000-0002-6355-3150, Leipzig University) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-08 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New Media & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1461-4448 • E-ISSN: 1461-7315 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/14614448251397518 |
| OpenAlex | W4417146730 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 36 |
Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is widely regarded as a transformative force, reshaping our understanding of both life and death. One experimental frontier is its ability to recreate deceased human beings. Our article explores this nascent GenAI application situated at the threshold of existence. We analyze 50 cases from the United States, Europe, the Near East, and East Asia and distill three principal modes of AI resurrections: (1) Spectacularization, the public re-staging of iconic deceased cultural figures via immersive recreations for entertainment spectacle; (2) Sociopoliticization, the re-invoking of victims of violence in political or commemorative contexts, often as posthumous testimonies; and (3) Mundanization, the everyday revival of loved ones, allowing users to interact with the deceased through chatbots or synthetic media. To engage with the underlying industry that capitalizes on digital remains, we introduce the notion of spectral labor, in which the dead become involuntary sources of data, likeness, and affect that are extracted, circulated, and monetized without their consent. We argue that the use of GenAI to animate the deceased raises urgent legal and ethical questions around posthumous appropriation, ownership, work, and control
Affect (linguistics · Entertainment · Everyday life · Frontier · Politics · Situated · Transformative learning · Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health
The Creation and Inheritance of Digital Afterlives
Making Social Science Matter
The state of immersive technology research
Let the dead talk
Existential Media
Postmortal Society
Immortality transformed
Envisioning postmortal futures
Towards a postmortal society of virtualised ancestors? The Virtual Deceased Person and the preservation of the social bond
Are we a ‘death-denying’ society? A sociological review
He’s Still There”
Digital Limit Situations
The continuity principle of digital remains
Media, mortality and necro-technologies
Like, share, and remember
Larger Than Life
Chatting with the dead
Representing Death in the News
The “algorithmic as if
Digital Séance
Do we deny death? II. Critiques of the death-denial thesis
Playing to the Crowd
The Unsacred and the Spectacularized
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |