Digital immortality. The emerging business of AI-based posthumous consumer services

Digital immortality (DI) is the possibility of preserving a person’s personality in a digital format after death, made feasible by recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI). Companies that commercialize AI-based posthumous services are part of the socalled digital afterlife industry,” populated by enterprises that profit from Managing and selling digital human remains. Researchers are increasingly interested in understanding how DI might be possible and how the emerging afterlife business will evolve. This understanding includes examining new technologies, philosophical questions, ethical and legal issues, economic implications, and how individuals and society will need to adapt. Accordingly, DI was analyzed from various disciplinary perspectives. However, despite the relevance of the topic at the company and consumer levels, there is a dearth of marketing research on this phenomenon. Therefore, an interdisciplinary literature review on DI was conducted with the aim of integrating and analyzing the findings from previous research from a marketing perspective. The preliminary results of the present review reveal multiple and interesting themes that are worth studying by marketing scholars in the future.