In the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons the spell Animate Dead allows the caster to re-animate a corpse as an undead slave. This sort of necromancy is generally considered evil and is avoided by good creatures. While the entertainment industry lacks true necromancers, some years ago they developed a technological Animate Dead in the form of the celebrity hologram. While this form of necromancy does not animate the corpse of a dead celebrity, it re-creates their body and makes it dance, sing, and speak at the will of its masters. Tupac Shakur is probably the best known victim of this dark art of light and there were plans to re-animate Amy Winehouse. As should be expected, AI is now being used to re-animate dead actors. Ian Holm, who played the android Ash in Alien, was re-animated for a role in Alien: Romulus. While AI technology is different from the older holographic technology, they are similar enough in their function to allow for a combined moral assessment.
One relevant factor in assessing the ethics of this matter is how the re-animations are used and what they are made to do. Consider, for example, the holographic Amy Winehouse. If the hologram is used to re-create a concert she recorded, then this is morally on par with showing a video of the concert. The use of a hologram would seem to be just a modification of the medium, such as creating a VR version of the concert. Using a hologram in this manner seems morally fine. But the ethics can become more complicated if the re-animation is not simply a change of the medium of presentation.
One concern is the ethics of making the re-animation perform in new ways. That is, the re-animation is not merely re-enacting what the original did in a way analogous to a recording but being used to create new performances. This is of special concern if the re-animation is made to perform with other performers (living or dead), to perform at specific venues (such as a political event), or to endorse or condemn products, ideas or people.
If, prior to death, the celebrity worked out a contract specifying how their re-animation can be used, then this would lay to rest some moral concerns. After all, this use of the re-animation would be with permission and no more problematic than if they did those actions while alive. If re-animations become common, presumably such contracts will become a standard part of the entertainment industry.
If a celebrity did not specify how their re-animation should be used, then there could be moral problems. To illustrate, a celebrity might have been against this use of holograms (as Prince was), a celebrity might have disliked the other performers that their image is now forced to sing and dance with, or a celebrity might have loathed a product, idea or people that their re-animation is being forced to endorse. One approach to this matter is to use the guideline of legal ownership of the rights to a celebrity’s works and likeness.
When a celebrity dies, the legal rights to their works and likeness goes to whoever is legally specified to receive them. This person or business then has the right to exploit the works and likeness for their gain. For example, Disney can keep making money off the Star Wars films featuring Carrie Fisher, though she died in 2016. On this view, the likeness of a celebrity is a commodity that can be owned, bought and sold. While a living celebrity can disagree with the usage of their likeness, after death their likeness is controlled by the owner who can use it as they wish (assuming the celebrity did not set restrictions). This is analogous to the use of any property whose ownership is inherited. It can thus be contended that there should be no special moral exception that forbids monetizing a dead celebrity’s likeness by the owner of that likeness. That said, the next essay in the series will explore reasons as to why the likeness of a celebrity is morally different from other commodities.