Beyond Mortality: Ethical, Legal, and Social Frontiers of the Digital Afterlife and Posthumous Lifespan

Advances in artificial intelligence, data preservation, and immersive digital environments are transforming what it means to die and what it means to remain. Digital afterlife technologies increasingly enable individuals to persist as datafied selves long after biological death, whether through memorialized social media accounts, algorithmically curated legacies, or AI-driven avatars capable of interacting with the living. These developments challenge conventional understandings of personhood, identity, autonomy, and the temporal boundaries of the human lifespan.This research topic examines the ethical, legal, and social implications of digital persistence, exploring how emerging technologies reshape the human lifecycle and generate new forms of posthumous existence. In parallel, advances in genetics and genomics, including large-scale biobanks, direct-to-consumer testing, precision medicine, and longevity research, are dramatically expanding the volume, persistence, and sensitivity of biological data that may outlive individuals. Such data can be reused, reinterpreted, and combined with other datasets to generate inferences about relatives, communities, and populations across generations.As genetic information increasingly intersects with digital identity, data analytics, and AI-driven profiling, it raises urgent questions about posthumous privacy, consent, ownership, and governance. Biological data that persists after death does not remain inert. It can shape medical decision-making, risk prediction, eligibility for benefits, and reputational assessments, while also implicating the rights and interests of family members and broader social groups. Together, digital traces and biological data complicate traditional distinctions between life and death, individual and collective interests, and present and future harms.Key themes include, but are not limited to:· The ethics of creating, maintaining, and interacting with digital replicas of deceased individuals· Consent, control, and ownership of postmortem data· The emerging concept of a posthumous lifespan defined not by biology, but by data durability and technological mediation· The respective rights and responsibilities of families, platforms, institutions, and society in stewarding digital remains· The psychological, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of persistent digital presence· The secondary use and governance of postmortem genetic and genomic data, including biobank participation, clinical sequencing, and consumer genetics, and their implications for kin, communities, and public trust· The ways in which AI and data science combine digital traces with biological and genetic data to shape posthumous identity, reputation, risk profiling, and access to services or benefitsWe invite contributions that examine how these technologies alter practices of grief, remembrance, and memory formation; reshape intergenerational relationships; and enable new forms of data reuse, manipulation, or commercialization. We also welcome legal and regulatory analyses addressing digital wills, inheritance of data, posthumous privacy, and the governance of AI-mediated personas, as well as work on posthumous access to genetic test results, familial disclosure obligations, ownership claims over biospecimens and sequence data, and the cross-border governance and intellectual property challenges posed by persistent biological data.At its core, this collection asks a fundamental question: What becomes of a person when their digital existence outlives their biological one? Contributors are encouraged to articulate frameworks for ethical governance, culturally sensitive design, and responsible innovation, while also probing deeper philosophical questions about identity, dignity, and the continuity of the self. Drawing on multidisciplinary perspectives, this special issue aims to map the emerging contours of the digital afterlife and the posthumous lifespan, illuminating how societies should navigate the expanding frontier between life, death, and enduring data. In doing so, it examines how posthumous existence may be shaped not only by digital traces, but also by persistent biological information, particularly genetic data, that continues to affect families, health systems, and social institutions long after an individual’s death. Topic editors: Dov Greenbaum Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/76911/beyond-mortality-ethical-legal-and-social-frontiers-of-the-digital-afterlife-and-posthumous-lifespan