First Conference of the Digital Ethics Laboratory discusses artificial intelligence, grief, and human dignity
“Can artificial intelligence (AI) avatars of deceased individuals help us cope with grief, or do they risk causing deeper ethical and relational harm?” This was the central question of the first international conference of the Digital Ethics Laboratory (LED), a research unit of the Research Centre of the Institute for Political Studies, pioneering in the ethical study of AI and digital afterlife.
Organised in partnership with the Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab and the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, the event brought together experts in Philosophy, Theology, Technology, and Ethics at the Catholic University of Portugal in Lisbon. Together, they discussed how Artificial Intelligence is transforming humanity’s relationship with memory, grief, and posthumous identity, while analysing the ethical challenges and boundaries of AI, memory, and the human experience of loss.
Across three thematic panels, participants examined the existential and moral risks associated with simulating the dead through AI. They also addressed the rise of AI ghostbots — digital avatars that simulate deceased individuals — and assessed their implications for human dignity, justice, and the future of mourning in technologically mediated societies.
One of the most striking moments of the conference was the presentation of a real-life case in which an AI ghostbot was used in a murder trial to simulate the victim’s voice during the sentencing phase. The judge, visibly moved, stated: “I love that AI, thank you for this [...] I heard forgiveness. I feel it was genuine.” This example provoked a strong reaction from the audience, raising profound questions about the emotional and ethical legitimacy of allowing an artificial system to exert direct influence over judicial decision-making and the shaping of collective memory.
It was in this context that Charles Ess, Professor at the University of Oslo, challenged the audience to consider the implications of “digital immortality” for human personality, identity, and the experience of loss in a world where the boundary between the living and the dead is becoming increasingly blurred.
The way in which this technology may alter the emotional foundations of mourning also generated intense debate.
Addressing the theme “Human Beings: Finite, Loving, and Grieving Animals”, William Hasselberger, Professor at the Universidade Católica and the University of Virginia, argued that “a flourishing human life is grounded in deep bonds of love and friendship with other people who, like us, are fragile, finite, and mortal.” He went on to emphasise that “the centrality of love and attachment in the human experience necessarily makes us vulnerable to grief — a fundamental dimension of the human condition.”
According to Isabel Capeloa Gil, President of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, academia must play a decisive role in guiding ethical reflection on technology. “The future of this technology will shape our perception of life, the way we create, the way we tell our story, and the connections that bind us to our past,” she stated in her closing address at the conference.
As part of the international project Digital Afterlives, developed in collaboration with the University of Notre Dame and the University of Virginia, this conference reaffirms the commitment of the Institute for Political Studies (IEP) of the Catholic University to leading ethical and philosophical reflection on the impact of artificial intelligence on human dignity.
By fostering dialogue between technology and the humanities, the IEP also advances its mission to place the human person at the centre of the debate on the future of AI, actively contributing to the construction of a society in which innovation is guided by moral responsibility and historical awareness.