As AI systems quickly improve in both breadth and depth of performance, they lend themselves to creating increasingly powerful and realistic agents, including the possibility of agents modeled on specific people. We anticipate that within our lifetimes it may become common practice for people to create custom AI agents to interact with loved ones and/or the broader world after death; indeed, the past year has seen a boom in startups purporting to offer such services. We call these generative ghosts, since such agents will be capable of generating novel content rather than merely parroting content produced by their creator while living. In this paper, we reflect on the history of technologies for AI afterlives, including current early attempts by individual enthusiasts and startup companies to create generative ghosts. We then introduce a novel design space detailing potential implementations of generative ghosts, and use this analytic framework to ground discussion of the practical and ethical implications of various approaches to designing generative ghosts, including potential positive and negative impacts on individuals and society. Based on these considerations, we lay out a research agenda for the AI and HCI research communities to better understand the risk/benefit landscape of this novel technology so as to ultimately empower people who wish to create and interact with AI afterlives to do so in a beneficial manner.

翻译：随着人工智能系统在性能的广度和深度上迅速提升，它们正被用于创造日益强大且逼真的智能体，其中也包括基于特定个体建模的智能体。我们预见，在有生之年，人们创建定制化AI智能体以便在死后与亲友及/或更广泛世界互动的做法可能变得普遍；事实上，过去一年已涌现大量声称提供此类服务的初创企业。我们将此类智能体称为"生成式幽灵"，因为它们能够生成新颖内容，而非仅仅复现其创造者生前产出的内容。本文首先回顾了人工智能来世技术的发展历程，包括当前个体爱好者和初创企业创建生成式幽灵的早期尝试。随后，我们提出了一个描述生成式幽灵潜在实现方式的新型设计空间，并运用该分析框架系统探讨了不同生成式幽灵设计方法带来的实践与伦理影响，包括对个体和社会可能产生的积极与消极作用。基于以上分析，我们为人工智能与人机交互研究界规划了研究议程，旨在更深入理解这项新兴技术的风险/效益格局，从而最终帮助希望创建及互动人工智能来世的人们以有益的方式实现这一目标。