What happens when the dead don’t log off?

Microsoft was granted a similar patent in 2021, which outlined a conversational chatbot that could simulate a user’s personality using their social media data, such as images, voice notes, written messages and posts.

Both companies have denied plans to develop these into actual products. Microsoft’s Director of Cloud & AI Platforms – Strategy, Tim O’Brien, had even called it “disturbing” at the time. The technology, if pursued, indeed raises some unsettling questions. What if the bot were to make erroneous or libellous comments? Who is responsible legally? Who decides its moral ambit, or is it beyond morality altogether? Is it a way to preserve the dead or a constant reminder of one’s death? How does one grieve someone who isn’t virtually dead?

Technology to keep the dead alive has, of course, already existed. There are educational applications. For instance, a life-sized AI-avatar at the Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library in Delhi can answer visitors’ questions as Sardar Patel. Then, there are more personal applications, such as deathbots and griefbots, which adopt the personality of those deceased to interact with their loved ones. The response to these has been mixed. For some, these AI bots can provide closure or an emotional crutch during a difficult time. Some experts suggest it can help process grief. The danger, however, lies in overdependency on these bots, which could hamper the very process, or an adverse interaction, which may elicit unwanted emotions.

But the idea of a digital afterlife doesn’t seem so outlandish, given humanity’s obsession with immortality. The concept prevails, right from ancient literature to the pop culture of our times (think Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean and Avatar). Billionaire tech bros like Oracle’s Larry Ellison and co-founder of PayPal Peter Thiel have invested millions into longevity research. Eternal’s Deepinder Goyal is among the latest to join the bandwagon. This obsession with living longer shows up in “biohacking” trends that advocate certain lifestyle and fitness choices. Whether humans can biologically live longer remains an unanswered scientific query, but achieving immortality — at least a digital one — looks more possible than ever before.

My argument against both remains the same. The dead give back. When we die, we all return to the soil in one form or another and sustain new life. On a planet already burdened by the demands of the living, is it not our responsibility to leave behind plenty for those who come after? Sustaining a growing population means extracting resources faster than they can be replenished. What happens when the dead, too, begin to consume the Earth’s resources?

Running AI models takes vast amounts of land, water, and energy. A single data centre can consume millions of litres of water daily for cooling. Training large AI models has been compared, in carbon footprint, to the lifetime emissions of several cars. If digital immortality scales — and technology has a way of scaling — its environmental cost will not be trivial. It will be borne disproportionately by the very future generations we claim to be leaving a legacy for.

And if we were to look beyond death, what if the living began employing bots to take over social media tasks? The ground has already been laid. AI-generated content and chatbots are steadily replacing human fingerprints on the internet. The chasm between the “real” and the “virtual” has shrunk. Consider 2025’s word of the year, “parasocial”, used to describe an almost-real relationship, at least in one’s imagination, between a person and an online entity. The internet has become a place of almost-real interactions. The world, despite its ever-connectedness, is lonelier than ever. Social media is already less “social”. And if the future holds only bots interacting with other bots, what will we be left with? A simulacrum talking to another simulacrum? Almost the real deal. Almost.

sonal.gupta@indianexpress.com