The Talking Dead: An Analysis of Posthumous Identity Construction in AI Voice-Cloning Services

Analysis of Representation Authenticity and Social Implications

Kirjoittajat

• Katerina Linden Linköping University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.57124/thanatos.160215

Avainsanat:

death online, continuing bonds, connective presence, AI afterlife services, AI voice avatars, synthetic representation

Abstrakti

This paper investigates how AI voice-cloning afterlife services conceptualise and construct posthumous identity through the medium of voice, and how cultural, economic, and political factors shape these emerging sociotechnical imaginaries of grief and remembrance. Examining HereAfter, Eternos, and You, Only Virtual, the analysis applies frameworks from media, memory, and death studies, particularly concepts of continuing bonds, posthumous personhood, and self-representation. The study demonstrates that AI voice avatars do not preserve authentic selves but produce synthetic, hyper-curated identities, shaped by user input, platform design, and machine learning constraints. Voice, as both medium and message, amplifies emotional resonance and connective presence, while concealing the artificiality of algorithmic reconstruction. These technologies, positioned as compassionate tools for mourning, simultaneously function as instruments of datafication and commodification of grief, entangling intimacy with commercial logics. The discussion highlights critical ethical and regulatory challenges, including issues of consent, posthumous dignity, privacy, and trust. Ultimately, the paper argues that AI afterlife platforms are not neutral memorial tools but socio-technical assemblages that actively perform and reshape cultural understandings of death, identity, and memory in the age of generative AI, calling for transparent regulation and interdisciplinary ethical reflection.