Generative Horcrux: Designing AI Carriers for Afterlife Selves

2026-03-13

AI Summary

This study explores the design of generative AI artifacts that embody digital legacies and deceased individuals’ identities to support intergenerational engagement with their memory and presence. Through speculative narratives, participatory design workshops, and tangible interactive prototypes, the work introduces the concept of “generative soul vessels”—AI-based memorials that integrate functional, symbolic, and affective dimensions. Bridging human-computer interaction, design thinking, and AI ethics, the research proposes a novel conceptual framework and methodological pathway for digital heritage. It aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue and expand the innovative application of generative AI in posthumous care, reimagining how technology can mediate enduring relationships with the departed.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Game Design — Procedural Content Generation & Storytelling
• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Artificial General Intelligence
• Intelligent Robots: Embodied AI

Application Category

• Social Networks and Social Media: Generative AI / large language models and their impact on social systems
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Economic ramifications for generative AI infrastructure and applications
• Semantics and Knowledge: Data modeling to support human-machine intelligence, including LLMs agents, intelligent system behavior, explanations, and user-friendly interactions

Abstract

As generative AI technologies rapidly advance, AI agents are gaining the ability not only to collect data and perform tasks but also to respond to environments and evolve over time. This shift opens new possibilities for reimagining digital legacy - raising critical questions about how we remember, commemorate, and interact with the traces of the deceased. The forms of these AI agents are particularly important, as they act as vessels for digital legacies - much like urns for ashes. We will ask: What kinds of devices or representations would we want to store our digital selves or legacies in? How do we envision future generations interacting with these forms? The question is not only about the function of these agents or the object's role as a storage vessel but also the meaning it carries, the memories it preserves, and its connection to the extended notion of our "Generative Horcrux." This three-hour in-person workshop invites design practitioners and researchers from diverse backgrounds to explore the emerging landscape of generative AI agent-based digital legacy. This workshop uses fiction and hands on prototyping to explore how AI agents might reconfigure memory, identity, and posthumous presence in future sociotechnical worlds. We anticipate that this session will foster interdisciplinary dialogue and contribute conceptually and methodologically to HCI, design research, and AI ethics.

Problem

• digital legacy
• generative AI
• posthumous presence
• AI agents
• memory

Innovation

• Generative AI
• Digital Legacy
• AI Agents
• Posthumous Presence
• Design Fiction