From Griefbots to Personalized AI Twins: Mapping the Ethical Landscape of Digital Duplicates

The rise of generative AI has enabled the creation of digital duplicates, AI recreations of real people designed to imitate their likeness, voice, and/or behaviour. These range from grief-support avatars that mimic deceased loved ones to AI twins that handle tasks on our behalf. This talk introduces a new taxonomy for digital duplicates based on two key factors: whether they represent the living or deceased and whether they were created with consent. The resulting four categories - (1) Authorised AI Replicas, (2) Unauthorised Deepfakes, (3) Legacy Avatars, and (4) Posthumous Reconstructions - each present unique ethical challenges. Through a combination of real-world examples and potential future use cases, this talk explores both the promises and risks of these emerging.