digital ghost

plural digital ghosts

1. A digital avatar of a deceased person, such as a deathbot.

   “If I die and my children access my email account and reanimate me … for me, personally, that’s a horrific prospect,” says Professor Robert Sparrow of Monash University, who has written about the ethics of digital ghosts.

   2025 March 5, Patricia Clarke, “You and me, we gonna live forever … as avatars, at least”, in The Observer

   2 more examples

   This means there will be a December day when, instead of standing in the kitchen with my mom, I’ll be standing with her digital ghost. I’ll have mourned her physical passing, but will still be able to summon a part of her via my phone, propped up against the flour with one of many smudged and annotated recipe scans on display.

   2023 August 10, Kate Lindsay, “My Mom Will Email Me After She Dies”, in The Atlantic

   The oddly metallic voice speaking to the ex-CNN journalist Jim Acosta in an interview on Substack this week was actually that of a digital ghost: an AI, trained on the teenager’s old social media posts at the request of his parents, who are using it to bolster their campaign for tougher gun controls.

   2025 August 8, Gaby Hinsliff, “When a journalist uses AI to interview a dead child, isn’t it time to ask what the boundaries should be?”, in The Guardian, →ISSN