Now that AI can seamlessly imitate a person's voice and likeness, this means our digital likeness is virtually immortal. If AI has access to enough of your conversation and writing, it can probably do a good job of impersonating your personality, too.
The default in copyright law is that everyone owns their own likeness. It's why you often see faces blurred out on TV. It means the production company didn't get the person to sign a model release form. However, the law is much less clear about likeness ownership after death. It varies by country and state, and generally gives much fewer rights to the individual.
Is it time to strengthen those laws? The thought of being the property of Big Tech in perpetuity is dystopian and depressing, even if you won't be around to experience it.
Meta patents AI that takes over a dead person’s account to keep posting and chatting
Who owns your identity and likeness after death? Meta patents AI that takes over a dead person’s account to keep posting and chatting.
byu/lughnasadh inFuturology
28 Comments
I will leave my likeness to my kids in my will, checkmate Facebook.
Meta making business moves based off of Black Mirror, they know it’s *dystopian* sci-fi horror and nobody wants that, right?….
Ah lads, if you’re still using facebook delete that shit it’s toxic
What a monster meta has become. I want to wake up from this bad dream back to seventies!
Every day I’m more convinced that Johnny Silverhand has the right ideas…
Wow new low, meta never ceases to amaze me . Not having humanity nor respect for people who leave this world and also keep the loved ones enslaved to their platform even in grief. Sympathy and empathy all out of the window along with privacy.
I also smell a problem where fake account exist, now they found a way to keep accounts alive. So now even once alive and active users are AI bots now. What a twisted “legal” way to increase their active user status?. Policies never supported users anyways.
Everyday that adultswim skit about the digital avatar thing becomes more real.
Good thing I haven’t used FB in probably 15+ years alone shared very few photos and nothing with my voice. This is dystopian level shit that robs people of their autonomy even after death.
My favourite conspiracy theory: they already did this several years ago with trump.
Instagram influencers now can die but Instagram can maintain the revenue stream from their content.
Doesn’t that simply become part of the inheritance, like copyright?
So Zucker just started to watch black mirror it seems, and takes notes.
Imagine posting your personal information on the Internet. Poor souls.
The patent doesn’t give them the rights or ownership of anything, fortunately.
Just what the world needs, something that continues to post like 16 yr old me forever.
….yaaay
I can’t wait for the communities of dead people being puppeted by robots.
We don’t need to go to copywrite law. The EULA and terms of service agreed to by every user of Facebook/Instagram turns that right over to Meta.
I can’t even imagine being the sort of ghoul who works on this stuff.
So much for Dead Internet Theory, that just wasn’t sufficiently dystopian. It’s time to reanimate millions of digital corpses for the Undead Internet!
A snall bit of trivia I remember is Michael Jackson’s family registered a Trademark for his name (and likeness?) after his death in 2009. Honestly not sure if it’s helpful against what Meta is doing though. Anyone can look up the trademark by name at sos.ca.gov.
I suppose an average Redditor can set up something like it and ensure their family has leverage to stop Meta from “acting” on their behalf?
Somewhere.. in the TOS. Where it gives you the option, i agree. Will be the that tiny phrase thats gives up your right to your own facebook account and likeness..
Forget after death, I’m relatively sure that you don’t even own your Facebook identity and likeness while you’re still alive.
I swear to god we are 1-2 years away from an AI Kurt Cobain doing an advert for shotguns if big tech get their way
This is wrong as hell – it amounts to identity theft.
Posting on an inactive account can seriously disturb timeline. If there’s an investigation pending, and there’s a need to determine when exactly someone was seen (in real life, or online), it can fool the Police, the family etc. into a false sense of security. At least for some time, but the time may be just enough so the bad guy escapes.
What’s the commercial benefit here for Meta? Dead users don’t view ads. The whole thing exists to sell ads and apparently, enough people click ads on Facebook to make advertising on Facebook worthwhile. Meta can get dead users to click ads, but that charade only lasts so long…unless Meta will also buy enough products to trick companies into believing their ad metrics and then resell them on Facebook Marketplace.
Man, we just need to learn to let people, ourselves included, die. It’s just a part of reality, and we need to stop trying to fight it because it will just get more and more twisted every level down we go.
Read the T&Cs.
If you have Facebook account, you have a Meta account and therefore you have given them the rights to your likeness alive or dead
Realistically it should be retained by the estate as an item of intellectual property. If your likeness has an implicit copyright, it should be no more difficult a question than “who owns Mickey mouse”