Generative AI – which encompasses large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT but also image and video generators like DALL·E 2 – supercharges what has come to be known as “digital necromancy”, the conjuring of the dead from the digital traces they leave behind.
Debates around digital necromancy were first sparked in the 2010s by advances in video projection (“deep fake” technology) leading to the reanimation of Bruce Lee, Michael Jackson and Tupac Shakur. It also led to posthumous film appearances by Carrie Fisher and Peter Cushing, among others.
Initially the preserve of heavily-resourced film and music production companies, the emergence of generative AI has widened access to the technologies that were used to re-animate these and other stars to everyone.
