Artificially alive: An exploration of AI resurrections and spectral labor modes in a postmortal society

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is widely regarded as a transformative force, reshaping our understanding of both life and death. One experimental frontier is its ability to recreate deceased human beings. Our article explores this nascent GenAI application situated at the threshold of existence. We analyze 50 cases from the United States, Europe, the Near East, and East Asia and distill three principal modes of AI resurrections: (1) Spectacularization, the public re-staging of iconic deceased cultural figures via immersive recreations for entertainment spectacle; (2) Sociopoliticization, the re-invoking of victims of violence in political or commemorative contexts, often as posthumous testimonies; and (3) Mundanization, the everyday revival of loved ones, allowing users to interact with the deceased through chatbots or synthetic media. To engage with the underlying industry that capitalizes on digital remains, we introduce the notion of spectral labor, in which the dead become involuntary sources of data, likeness, and affect that are extracted, circulated, and monetized without their consent. We argue that the use of GenAI to animate the deceased raises urgent legal and ethical questions around posthumous appropriation, ownership, work, and control.