AI avatars of deceased people — or "deadbots" — are showing up in new and unexpected contexts, including ones where they have the power to persuade.
[...]
Legal, ethical and moral issues
Before deadbot advertising can take off, there are legal kinks to work out. "In America, we're struggling with the privacy rights of the living, let alone the privacy rights of the deceased," said Jeffrey Rosenthal, an attorney in Philadelphia specializing in technology and privacy with the law firm Blank Rome LLP.
There are no comprehensive federal laws governing the use of AI in the United States. (The European Union does have legislation that seeks to put guardrails around the use of AI, but it does not specify deadbots.)
What the U.S. does have is a patchwork of state laws that recognize a person's right to protect the commercial use of their name, likeness, voice and other identifying characteristics even after they're dead. But Rosenthal said the current legal framework is, overall, ill-equipped to handle the harms that might arise from, say, a deadbot grandmother spouting ads at family members.
"Who is liable?" Rosenthal said. "The software company that developed the deadbot grandmother? The advertising company that inserted their ad? The company that owns the IP? There are many different ways that this could result in an unclear path as to what the law says should happen, and then separately what society deems should happen from an ethical and moral perspective."
To read the full article, please click here.
"AI ‘Deadbots’ Are Persuasive — And Researchers Say They’re Primed for Monetization," by Chloe Veltman was published in NPR on August 26, 2025.