Digital Afterlives And Post-Human Jurisprudence: Rethinking Rights Beyond Death
- IJLLR Journal
- Sep 17
- 2 min read
Dr Kriti Singh, Associate Professor, Amity School of Communication, Noida, Post Doc Scholar, Manipur International University
Introduction
In the twenty-first century, human existence has extended into digital realms where identities, memories, and assets often outlive biological death. Research from the Oxford Internet Institute in 2019 estimated that Facebook could host as many as 1.4 billion deceased users by the end of this century, underlining the unprecedented scale of “digital afterlives.” Similarly, Google’s “Inactive Account Manager” provides mechanisms for users to determine the fate of their digital presence after death. These developments highlight an emerging legal frontier: the governance of post-mortem digital rights.
Traditional legal frameworks in India and abroad were not designed to address the complexities of digital remains. The Indian Succession Act, 1925, for instance, regulates inheritance of tangible property but is silent on digital assets or virtual identities. Comparative jurisdictions have begun experimenting with solutions: France’s Loi pour une République numérique (2016) allows individuals to create “digital wills,” while the United States has seen litigation such as Ajemian v. Yahoo! (2017), where the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held that the Stored Communications Act did not bar disclosure of a deceased user’s emails to estate administrators. These responses, however, remain fragmented and anthropocentric, often treating digital traces merely as property rather than as extensions of personhood.
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and data-driven technologies complicates the picture further. Patents such as Microsoft’s 2021 filing for a chatbot capable of simulating the personality of deceased individuals raise difficult questions of legal personhood, liability, and dignity. When avatars, holograms, or AI agents trained on personal data continue to act beyond a person’s death, the boundaries between property, identity, and agency blur. These scenarios move the debate from classical inheritance law to speculative jurisprudence—law that anticipates post-human futures.
In this context, “digital afterlives” demand reconceptualisation not only as issues of privacy or succession but as matters of post-human jurisprudence. The central question is whether law, traditionally built around living human subjects, can evolve to govern entities that persist beyond death and may even acquire autonomy. This chapter argues that a post-human legal framework must engage with dignity, accountability, and rights in a manner that rethinks law beyond the biological human.
