Among existing applications of artificial intelligence, “digital resurrection” directly engages with the theme of life and death, touching on emotional vulnerabilities and sparking heated discussions within both the academic community and the general public. Digital resurrection employs AI technology to generate a deceased person’s face and voice, producing data- and image-level simulacra of their “resurrection.” It bridges the present and the past, evolving into a sociocultural vision of the future, interwoven with digital experiences and emotion. At the same time, the ethical and moral controversies surrounding digital resurrection demand profound reflection and caution. 

Providing digital experience while involving illusory perceptions

Digital resurrection not only represents an intervention and innovation in traditional mourning practices, but also provides the living and the “resurrected” with a digital experience that is physically perceptible and spiritually communicative. Through augmentative devices, a sensory and even emotional connection is established between the body and the digital image, producing a strong emotional impact. This experience is also reflected in the way digital memory storage mitigates the biological tendency to forget. Vast cloud storage offers seemingly rich and comprehensive records of life. Smart devices guide users to retrieve and review their life trajectories within data streams, triggering memories through keywords. As the selection, uploading, and sharing of life data constitute a process of examining, modifying, and even reshaping oneself, the digital replica of the deceased can never truly reproduce their full living identity.

Digital resurrection is characterized by its “disembodied” nature; users accept it partly because of the digital experience they have accumulated from using smart devices. As these experiences become more commonplace, digital resurrection offers increasingly deeper, realistic immersive interactions, further blurring the boundaries between the virtual and the real.

Digital resurrection involves illusory perceptions produced by intelligent technology. On one hand, intelligent technology endows machines with highly anthropomorphized appearances and functions. Their friendly, interactive features inspire an optimistic outlook on “machine consciousness,” reflecting humanity’s expectation that machines possess “souls and emotions.” Digital resurrection also internalizes the human longing for eternity, reunion, and reconnection, a theme particularly salient in certain Chinese works of science fiction.

On the other hand, due to the complex principles underlying intelligent technology and its ease of application, users tend to focus on the interactive experiences it offers, while lacking a profound understanding of its internal architecture. When a complex mechanism elicits deep emotional resonance, people are inclined to construct sociocultural narratives and ideas around it. The less understanding there is of the principles of intelligent technology, the stronger the belief that technological advances can eliminate the fear of death and fulfill the desire for immortality.

Recognizing risks of digital resurrection

In traditional acts of mourning, the living use objects in the present time and space to evoke memories and activate emotions, with an emphasis on remembrance. Digital resurrection begins with sensory continuation, recreating the inevitably perishable physical life in an attempt to mitigate or even deny the reality of death. At present, this technological nostalgia does not necessarily heal the grief of the living; in fact, it may cause emotional dissonance, frustration, or even the commodification of emotion. In “Be Right Back,” a season 2 episode of the British TV series “Black Mirror,” a young woman attempts to alleviate the grief of her boyfriend’s passing by communicating with an AI-generated replica of him. After struggling to accept the disjunction between the “replica” and the original, she ultimately locks the AI system in the attic.

Under current technological conditions, digital replicas of the deceased remain at the representational level, serving a performative function but lacking the extensiveness of life and the impulse for creation, change, or experience inherent in genuine life. In recent years, some individuals and businesses have used AI technology to “resurrect” public figures, releasing videos to attract traffic and generate profit. These actions have provoked widespread controversy. To prevent the risks posed by emerging technologies and secondary harm to the living, digital resurrection must be governed by clear emotional, ethical, and legal boundaries.

Zhang Yue is a lecturer from the School of Journalism and Communication at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.