Commodifying death: Thanatechnologies as platform workers in the digital afterlife economy

Abstract

Bina48 is the most ambitious manifestation of thanatechnologies, AI systems that digitally resurrect deceased individuals. Online platforms harvest and assemble data, photos, and personal digital effects to reanimate the individual via AI and reap the profits that come from their ongoing interactions with living users. The profiles of deceased individuals are directly owned and mobilized by the platform itself. Building on digital labor scholarship that shows how platforms extract value from living users, thanatechnologies represent a new kind of post-life laborer in the online economy, transforming grief and memory into exchange-value through emotional labor, social maintenance, and content generation. The specter of the zombie highlights how this digital labor intersects with histories of racial and gendered exploitation, particularly visible in the case of Bina48, where a black woman’s identity becomes a site of technological performance and commodification. Post-life laborers reveal contemporary understandings of labor, productivity, and the ongoing commodification of personal identity, affect, and sociality.