Chatbots that resurrect the dead: legal experts weigh in on ‘disturbing’ technology
Bodies in binary
National laws are inconsistent on how your data is used after your death. In the EU, thelawon data privacy only protects the rights of the living. That leavesroom for member statesto decide how to protect the data of the dead. Some, such asEstonia, France, Italy, and Latvia, have legislated on postmortem data. The UK’sdata protection lawshave not.
To further complicate matters, our data is mostly controlled by private online platforms such as Facebook and Google. This control is based on the terms of service that we sign up to when we create profiles on these platforms. Those terms fiercely protect the privacy of the dead.
For example, in 2005,Yahoo! refusedto provide email account login details for the surviving family of a US marine killed in Iraq. The company argued that their terms of service were designed to protect the marine’s privacy. A judge eventuallyorderedthe company to provide the family with a CD containing copies of the emails, setting a legal precedent in the process.
A few initiatives, such asGoogle’s Inactive Account ManagerandFacebook’s Legacy Contact, have attempted to address the postmortem data issue. They allow living users to make somedecisionson what happens to their data assets after they die, helping to avoid ugly court battles over dead people’s data in the future. But these measures are no substitute for laws.
One route to better postmortem data legislation is to follow the example oforgan donation. The UK’s “opt-out”organ donation lawis particularly relevant, as it treats the organs of the dead as donated unless that person specified otherwise when they were alive. The same opt-out scheme could be applied to postmortem data.
This model could help us respect the privacy of the dead and the wishes of their heirs, all while considering thebenefitsthat could arise fromdonated data: that data donorscould help save livesjust as organ donors do.
In the future, private companies may offer family members an agonizing choice: abandon your loved one to death, or instead pay to have them digitally revived. Microsoft’s chatbot may at present be too disturbing to countenance, but it’s an example of what’s to come. It’s timewe wrote the laws to govern this technology.
This article byEdina Harbinja, Senior Lecturer in Media/Privacy Law,Aston University;Lilian Edwards, Professor of Law, Innovation & Society, Newcastle Law School,Newcastle University, andMarisa McVey, Research fellow,Aston University,is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.
Story byThe Conversation
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