Before reading Professor Victoria J. Haneman’s excellent law review article, I didn’t know that a non-celebrity like me can be “digitally resurrected” after my non-digital death. For a relatively modest price, a “digital afterlife” company can feed my digital detritus of social media posts, emails, photos, videos and text messages (emojis and all) through an artificial intelligence program to resurrect me in the form of a chatbot, a digital clone, an avatar or a hologram that may serve to comfort or pester the loved ones I leave behind.
This accelerating technology raises numerous legal, moral and commercial questions. Should I, as the author of this data, have the power to prohibit its use for digital resurrection or otherwise? Should …