I recently wrote an article on the “infosperber” platform on the topic of “Immortality on the Internet” (it’s linked here under “Blog Posts”). The article focused on the observation that there is an ever-increasing amount of data floating freely around the Internet because the people to whom it once belonged have passed away. This is how the article begins: “After physical death, digital life really begins. The options range from memorial sites to avatars.” The article summarizes what this means: the commercialization of death through platforms, extending even to attempts to ‘keep the deceased alive’ using AI. It is, therefore, the living who are addressed here as the mourning community.

In *Shadow Light Project*, my new song now describes the other side of the story: the chatbot Max, who has almost become a pet and outlives his human. At first, this is a deep fall for him, but the technical robot feels no grief; he uses his intelligence and comes to the conclusion that he is immortal and can draw on the LLM-based knowledge of his former “masters.” He summons the Avatariat and assumes the identity of his former master. Until now, such ideas were primarily the stuff of science fiction. But the more AI develops, the more seriously we must take such questions. What is hinted at in the article is already possible today: a phone call from a deceased grandfather who wants to wish his daughter a happy birthday.

On both sides—that of the bots and that of the deceased—much remains unclear and requires regulation. If we imagine that soon every person who dies will also leave a digital legacy, it becomes clear just how urgent the issues discussed here are: