Technonecromancy: Simulacra of Presence and the Politics of Death in the Age of Generative Artificial Intelligence

Technonecromancy is a new form of mediation that uses generative models, voice cloning, and synthetic video to create dialogic simulations of the dead, shifting the relationship to the deceased from archival recollection to interactive presence. Drawing on science and technology studies, phenomenology, and 4E cognition, the article argues that these posthumous agents can phenomenologically reorganize mourning but are ontologically insufficient as continuations of persons. Examining cultural and commercial cases like griefbots and animated photo apps, it shows how engineered responsiveness can both support continuing bonds and foster dependence, reconfiguring rituals of loss.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This article theorizes technonecromancy as a novel regime of mediation that operationalizes spectral presence through generative models, voice cloning, and synthetic video, shifting the relation to the dead from archival recollection to dialogic simulation. Conceptually, it integrates science, technology, and society studies with phenomenology and 4E cognition to argue that posthumous agents are phenomenologically sufficient to reorganize mourning yet ontologically insufficient as continuants of persons. Empirically, it reads cultural and commercial cases (such as griefbots and animated photo apps) as epistemologies of the technocultural present, demonstrating how engineered responsiveness can both scaffold continuing bonds and entrench dependence, thereby reconfiguring rituals of loss and memory. Normatively, it advances a consent-first, provenance-rich governance program, with mandatory disclosure, machine-readable labeling, and revocability, aligned with frameworks, such as the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act’s transparency duties for synthetic content, and calls for fiduciary stewardship of digital remains. Thus, this study situates these proposals within the emerging digital afterlife industry, noting that social acceptability collapses absent explicit pre-mortem authorization and that professionalization is beginning to reshape industry standards. The result is a political-economic diagnosis: technonecromancy is a world-making apparatus whose risks and benefits can only be adjudicated where ontological critique, clinical harm minimization, and market governance converge.