Ghost writer! A new application will soon allow users to keep posting Twitter updates even from beyond the grave.
The
app independently uses intricate knowledge of a person's on-line
character to create a virtual continuation of their personality after
death.
"When your heart stops beating, you'll keep tweeting," says the new application's tagline.
To
be launched in March, the app called LivesOn uses Twitter bots powered
by algorithms that analyse your on-line behaviour and learn how you
speak, the 'Guardian' reported.
It will keep on scouring the
Internet, favouriting tweets and posting the sort of links you like,
creating a personal digital afterlife.
"It divides people on a gut
level, before you even get to the philosophical and ethical arguments,"
said Dave Bedwood, creative partner of Lean Mean Fighting Machine, the
London-based ad agency that is developing it.
"It offends some, and delights others. Imagine if people started to see it as a legitimate but small way to live on.
Cryogenics costs a fortune; this is free and I'd bet it will work better than a frozen head," Bedwood said.
Mia
Smith, a business owner in her mid-40s, has already registered her
interest. For her, it is the chance to have a "kind of ironic legacy"
that drew her in.
"But I'm not sure who'd be interested in reading a computer-generated 'me'," she said.
The
growth of "digital legacies" is already throwing up legal and ethical
issues: it's a violation of many websites' terms of service for
surviving relatives to go on using your passwords.
Social
networking site Facebook has already gone to court to oppose the idea
that families can force it to hand over data, the report said.
People
who sign up for LivesOn is asked to nominate an executor who will have
control of the account. Another service, DeadSocial, puts the power in
the deceased's hands.
The report said it is a "digital legacy
tool" that lets you set up a series of messages to be sent out
posthumously, via Facebook and Twitter.