Eredità digitale. Disciplina patrimoniale e tutela dei diritti post mortem.

This article examines how the ongoing digitalisation of the human experience has also had a significant impact on the concept of death, bringing about a profound transformation in the ways in which memory is preserved, the processes of mourning, and the ways in which individuals continue to exist in the digital space. Social media profiles, multimedia content and personal data continue, in fact, to persist beyond the physical passing of the individual, giving rise to new forms of posthumous presence and raising unprecedented legal issues related to the management of the deceased’s digital identity. In this context, platforms and major digital companies are assuming an increasingly significant role in regulating digital death, through the establishment of terms of service and internal policies concerning access to and the preservation of the deceased’s content. At the same time, the advent of generative AI and so-called ‘deathbots’ introduces further issues concerning the artificial simulation of the deceased’s presence and the gradual transformation of memory into an algorithmic experience. Building on these premises, this paper aims to analyse the phenomenon of ‘digital death’, highlighting how the post-mortem management of personal data cannot be reduced solely to matters of property or inheritance, but more broadly involves cultural, identity-related and ethical aspects concerning the construction of memory within the algorithmic environment.