Words by Nikki Stefanoff

Photography from Cimetière du Réconfort (Comfort Cemetery), 2019 by Timothée Chalazonitis

As we spend more and more of our lives online it’s only natural that our deaths are shifting that way, too. With emerging technology offering digital afterlives, grief bots and digital immortality, what does it mean for death, dying and grieving in the digital age?

Every time I open my Facebook account I’m greeted by a familiar face. It’s a smiling lady in her early 60s holding a glass of wine. I’m asked if I want to be friends with her and, of course, the answer is yes because this face belongs to my mum.

So far so Facebook, right? The only fly in the ointment of this normal-sounding scenario is that my mum died six years ago and because old Zuckerberg wasn’t on my immediate contact list I’m now faced with this ongoing ‘friend’ dilemma. I’ve no idea why we weren’t Facebook friends before this point but now I don’t want to say ‘no’ to the request because it makes me feel sad, I don’t want to say ‘yes’ and then be faced with a stagnant page and I don’t want to delete the request because, well….it all feels emotionally tricky.

Grieving is a complicated process at the best of times. But just as social media has changed the way we live our lives, it’s also brought a new and unprecedented dimension to the way we cope with death.

Dr Candi K Cann is an assistant professor at Baylor University, Waco, Texas, a death scholar and author of the book Virtual Afterlives: Grieving the Dead in the Twenty-First Century. When I chat to her about what it means to grieve in 2020 she agrees that it’s complicated.

“These days grieving can be done in both the online space in addition to real-life spaces. In a way it means we have a place to work through our feelings surrounding a death but it can mean that we’re grieving in a way that doesn’t necessarily give us the space to be uncomfortable,” she says. “Online, people offer platitudes and sympathy but it’s not the same as sitting with a person and holding them while they cry.”

While Cann believes that grieving online can be confusing, she also feels that connecting with the dead online is a positive thing. “I think it gives society a socially mediated space in which to connect with, think about and continue our relationship with the dead,” she says. “Grief studies have shown that Continuing Bonds Theory (CBT) is essentially renegotiating a relationship with the dead in a way that allows them to be a part of our lives. Whether that’s through setting a place for them at the table at Christmas or leaving messages online for them on their social media. I think that the internet is a really useful tool in providing people with a creative way to continue their interaction with the deceased and one that might ultimately be helpful.”

Leaving messages on social media or sending emails to dead loved ones is one thing but getting a response is something else altogether – and technology is propelling us to a place where that’s an option. A place where we’ll be given the opportunity to replicate our dead rather than simply memorialise them. And while a fully functioning synthetic human (Black Mirror, anyone?) isn’t on the cards just yet, companies offering us digital immortality are already here.

Eterni.me, a start-up from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Entrepreneurship Development program, is one such example. Currently in Beta-testing, Eterni.me gives its users the chance to create a digital avatar. One that can exist forever while allowing future generations access to your past life. All you have to do is give the company your data – your thoughts, stories, and photographs. It then curates your data into a replication of you. A digital avatar with your life and your memories.

Replika is a start-up that has taken it a step further. Rather than replicate you, it creates your perfect AI companion – chatbots that are ready and willing to be your new best friend. Now an immensely popular app, Replika started life as the Roman bot. Renowned in tech circles, the Roman bot was created when Replika founder, Eugenia Kuyda, lost her closest friend Roman Mazurenko in a road accident. Driven by a need to memorialise his life, and already heading up Silicon Valley chatbot startup Luka, Kuyda found that the best way to bring Roman back to life was through their text conversations.

Not satisfied with a standard chatbot, however, Kuyda wanted to create something with Roman’s exact turn of phrase. So, as well as their own correspondence she collected texts and emails from his family and friends. And, after feeding all the information into an AI program she created what became known as the Roman bot – a digital version of her best friend who was available to talk whenever she needed him. Now, many years later, the Roman bot has morphed into Replika – the epitome of a BFF (best friend forever).

In some ways, it makes perfect sense that the way we interact with our dead shifts to online. After all, it’s where we spend the majority of our living. But the moral question surrounding what happens when technology moves us from memorialising our dead to replicating them is one we’re still grappling with.

Pat Stokes is an associate professor of philosophy at Deakin University, Melbourne and a regular contributor to the ABC on all things death and remembrance.

“In some ways, remembering our dead in 2020 is not that different from how we’ve done it in the past. We’ve always had these prosthetic extensions to keep the dead with us. Back then it was portraits, photos, diaries and memories but what we have now is almost their digital bodies. The bodies we present to people when we’re alive [via social media] are now still there when we die,” he says. “It always reminds me of this quote by Goethe: ‘we die twice. We die when our heart stops beating and we die the second time when the last person who loved us dies and we disappear from memory.’ There is a sense that we do keep the dead alive as objects of moral regard and as moral duty just by remembering them. And so, in some ways, the internet has made it easier for us to do that.”

With more and more emerging technology Stokes is of the view that alongside these more traditional ways of remembrance we’re getting ever closer to replication by being able to build convincing and interactive avatars. “When you look at all the start-ups creating chatbots and the CGI tech bringing Carrie Fisher back to life as well as studios making new movies with James Dean there will come a time when all these technologies intersect,” he says. “Sounds disturbing – but the thing about humans is that we seem to be very good at getting comfortable with new technology. My colleague Adam Buben says it best when he states that there is a difference between recollecting the dead and replacing them. A platform like Facebook is all about recollection whereas some of this newer technology seems to be more about replacing. They are trying to give us something that allows the dead to continue playing the same role in our lives they did while they were alive.”

The common thread throughout any discussion of dying in the digital age is data. The data we give away without thinking when we sign up to a new service/online-store/social media account. We think it means nothing but now more than anything our data means everything. Even when we’ve slipped off this mortal coil.

Elaine Kasket is a UK-based psychologist and author of All the Ghosts in the Machine: The Digital Afterlife of Your Personal Data. “Our data comes with a lot of issues around ownership, access and control. Who controls the digital legacy and who’s appointed to look after the online dead? Because as far as the tech companies are concerned when you sign up to a platform you are essentially appointing them to manage your data as they see fit in your death.” she says. “There is no regulation. These for-profit companies are hungry monsters for your data and still manage to monetise it once you’re gone.”

"A platform like Facebook is all about recollection whereas some of this newer technology seems to be more about replacing."

"We need to go back to filing cabinets [and] photo albums"

Kasket explains that data is financially advantageous to social media companies whether we’re alive or not. “Your data is still saleable because it remains useful for understanding a demographic. Your profile can still be used for marketing insights and so they can sell it on,” she says. “I could sell you an email list of 500,000 people and 150,000 of those people are dead. But because the dead don’t have legal personalities [these companies] can do whatever they like. Including using your data to train AI models. As far back as 2012, 2.5 million deceased Americans had their data actively used in applying for credit cards. Can you imagine what that number would be these days?”

Cleaning up our digital footprint is a mammoth task and in Kasket’s opinion impossible without the use of blockchain but we should certainly be doing everything we can. “One of the consequences of giving over information to these platforms is that we don’t have as much control over things as we think we do. We don’t have individual control of our data,” she says. “People need to start paying attention and thinking about where their information, sentimental or otherwise, is sitting. What control do they have over it and what control will their estate have over it if they die? The advice that people around just making a list of their passwords is not great but it’s passed on because there are no policies in place. But by just leaving passwords for accounts it exposes the people who have the information to legal liability because no one is supposed to be using your passwords to log on to the account. Plus, you don’t want a list of passwords getting into the wrong hands or the coffers of the estate could be drained.”

Kasket’s advice is to keep personal info on something like a clearly labelled USB. The password to the info should also be in the safe. “We need to go back to filing cabinets, photo albums and using technology where you can retain both the hardware and the software,” she says.

It’s ironic in some ways that with all the technology surrounding us and making our lives quicker, easier and more connected that the best way to keep us safe and sound is by following in the footsteps of the generation before us. A generation that lived without technology for decades.

Growing up in my mum’s house, we had a safe, a filing cabinet and a clearly labelled ‘important documents’ folder. And so perhaps rather than looking to solve my digital death dilemma online, I should simply go back to basics – delete her Facebook profile and choose to file her memory away in my own important documents folder. One that’s simply labelled ‘Mum’.

Nikki Stefanoff is a freelance journalist, editor and copywriter based in Melbourne. After spending 13 years editing and writing for newspapers and magazines in London, Nikki now uses her journalism background and love of a good chat to find powerful and meaningful stories to tell. She was also the launch editor of Matters Journal!