In recent days, Zelda Williams - daughter of legendary actor Robin Williams - has publicly denounced the use of artificial intelligence to recreate her father's voice and face, calling it "disgusting and inhumane."
And he is right.
Because behind the emotion, nostalgia and technological curiosity lies a problem that may soon affect each of us.
Digital twinning-the creation of digital copies of real, often deceased people-is one of the most ambiguous frontiers of generative artificial intelligence. We are not just talking about deepfakes of famous actors.
We're talking about ghost profiles: millions of digital, realistic, conversational replicas generated with AI trained on photos, videos, voices or texts of regular people who are deceased.
Today these clones are being used without consent, sometimes for profit, sometimes for morbid curiosity, sometimes for "emotional" experiments of dubious ethics, such as the trend of victims recounting their own murders, and even child pornography on profiles of minors no longer with us.
Behind the innovative practice of the digital twin, the digital twin, lie devastating impacts, if not protected by the privacy and data protection laws of individuals:
Posthumous identity violation: who determines whether a deceased person can be "replicated"? And who holds the digital rights once this action is taken by a company and the digital twin is entered into a database? The digital legacy always remains with the heirs, per European law.
Deepfakes and digital crimes: images or voices of the deceased are already being used in non-consensual pornography, deepfake scams, child pornography, and criminal storytelling.
Emotional manipulation: there are "services" that allow a parent to talk to their missing daughter - via AI chatbots. This raises many questions about how grieving will be experienced in the future with the existence of these tools.
Corporate reputation at risk: Just think if an AI agent appeared tomorrow with the face of your former CEO - created by a third party - "speaking for" the company. Or holding video calls with competitors, revealing company secrets.
This is not science fiction. It's happening now.
Just as it happens to public figures like Robin Williams, it also happens to key managers, brand ambassadors, influencers and politicians. But it also happens, increasingly, to your Aunt Maria, whose entire gallery exists on Instagram ready to be converted into an AI agent by some "creative" platform.
The paradox is that the technology that today helps us preserve digital memory, tomorrow could destroy the very concept of Identity and Dignity posthumously.
We can no longer speak of "ethical experimentation" or "gray zone."
A clear stance is needed:
Tech companies must implement systems of watermarking, tracking, and postmortem digital consent.
Policy makers must recognize the right to "digital death" and identity protection after life.
Brands and companies must establish internal policies on the use of AI to represent former employees, testimonials or founders.
And we, users and citizens, must stop applauding every "virtual resurrection" as if it were a technological miracle, and take care of the history and memory of our loved ones who are gone, and ourselves for the future.
👉 What if it was your father? Your mother? Your child? How much would it piss you off to know that an algorithm brought them back to life to entertain others?
The ethics of artificial intelligence is not a convention debate: it is a cultural, human and civic urgency.
If you need help now, contact us.