What Remains: AI, Death, and Loss

Our online lives increasingly outlast us, leaving our likeness with loved ones grappling with challenging but eternal questions of legacy, loss, and law. How does this digital afterlife change the ways we grieve, remember, and honor the wishes of those who have died?

Join Stacey Wales, whose family created the world’s first courtroom AI-generated victim impact statement depicting her late brother (resulting in a sentence recently overturned), Christopher Pelkey; Harvard Law School lecturer and BKC Faculty Associate Leah Plunkett; and Harvard professor Kathleen Coleman, who teaches an interdisciplinary course on loss, for a conversation about the legal, psychological, and ethical complexities of AI and death.

Who decides what happens to the data we leave behind, and who can access, inherit, or use it? How might an ongoing digital presence offer comfort, prolong grief, or transform our relationships with those we have lost? What happens when the wishes of the deceased conflict with the needs of the bereaved, or when personal remembrance becomes part of a public proceeding? Drawing on Wales’ experience alongside legal scholarship and perspectives on loss, the conversation will explore how digital afterlives intersect with longstanding rituals of mourning, and what responsibilities families, technology companies, and public institutions hold toward both the living and the dead.