Maybe... I Don't Really Wanna Clone: Attitudes and Anticipated Harms of (Consensual) After-Death Cloning of One's Own and Voices of Entrusted Others

The memories of people after their death could take on a "life of their own" with the help of GenAI voice cloning services. A "voice doppelgänger" thus could generate novel content that might cause harm in various ways for which the voice owner has no control over. To explore after-death voice cloning reckoning, we devised a two-stage mixed-method study. In the first stage, we developed ten after-death vignettes of (consensual) voice cloning through interviews with n₁=25 participants. In the second stage, we evaluated the attitudes and anticipated harms of cloning one’s own and voices of entrusted others relative to each of these vignettes through a n₂=919 participant survey. A "live forever" sentiment prevailed across all vignettes, though our participants were more likely to consensually use the voice of late family members than to give consent for their own voice to be used after their death. The anticipated abuse of the cloned after-death voice ranged from economic, cultural, social, and even harms to mind, reputation and physical well-being. We contextualize the threat of these harms towards a thanatosensitive design of security safeguards against rogue "voice doppelgänger" misuse.