Artificial replicas of real people using Large Language Models, e.g., GenAI avatars, digital duplicates, and AI simulations, raise profound questions about identity, consent, and moral responsibility. Unlike generic AI systems, these replicas are tied to specific individuals, creating distinct concerns about representation rights, posthumous dignity, and potential misuse across entertainment, politics, and beyond. Our research network brings together scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to explore the technical and normative implications of human replica technologies, including meaningful consent, responsibility assignment when replicas cause harm, and safeguards against exploitation. This network facilitates sharing research findings, coordinating studies, and developing policy recommendations. We welcome researchers investigating the ethical, legal, technical, and social dimensions of artificial human replicas to shape future responsible development of these powerful technologies.
Network
Clint Hurshman
Clint Hurshman is a philosopher of technology and research fellow at the National University of Singapore, Centre for Biomedical Ethics. He received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Kansas in 2025, and his research investigates various topics in the ethics of AI, including digital duplicates, anthropomorphism, privacy, and trust in AI.
Research Fellow – Centre for Biomedical Ethics
National University of Singapore
Atay Kozlowski
Atay Kozlovski is a philosopher working at the intersection of ethics, technology, and memory. He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Zurich and is currently a visiting researcher at TU Delft. His research focuses on the ethical and philosophical questions raised by digital duplicates and their implications for authenticity, agency, and remembrance in the digital age.
SNSF Postdoctoral Researcher, Sociotechnical AI Systems Lab
Delft University of Technology (TU Delft)
Benjamin Lange
Benjamin Lange leads a junior research group on the ethics of AI based at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the Munich Center for Machine Learning (MCML), funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). He is a Research Associate at the Oxford Uehiro Institute for Practical Ethics, and a member of the Center for Ethics and Philosophy in Practice (ZEPP) at LMU. In the past, he was a Visiting Researcher in the Responsible Innovation and AI Ethics Team at Google and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Hamburg. His research focuses on normative and practical ethics, business ethics, and the ethics of AI and technology.
Junior Research Group Lead / Nachwuchsgruppenleiter
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München & Munich Center for Machine Learning
Sven Nyholm
Sven Nyholm is Professor of the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence at LMU Munich and one of the Principal Investigators for the Munich Center for Machine Learning. He is also Area Editor for AI ethics for the journal Science and Engineering Ethics. His books include Humans and Robots: Ethics, Agency, and Anthropomorphism (2020), This is Technology Ethics: An Introduction (2023), and The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction (2026). Together with Paula Sweeney, Nyholm is currently working on a new book on the ethics of digital duplicates/AI imitations of real people.
Sebastian Porsdam Mann
Sebastian Porsdam Mann is an Assistant Professor at the University of Copenhagen and Visiting Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore. Trained in philosophy, neuroscience, applied ethics (BA, PhD, University of Cambridge), and international human rights law (DPhil, University of Oxford), his research spans law, ethics, and emerging technologies, in particular generative AI. Ranked #1 in Europe and #3 globally for “Ethical and Legal Issues” (by FWCI, SciVal 2019–2025), he has published in Nature Machine Intelligence, Nature Medicine, PNAS, and New England Journal of Medicine AI, was lead author of UNESCO’s brief on COVID-19 and the right to science, and has been interviewed three times by Nature and once by Science. He is author or editor of The Right to Science: Then and Now (CUP, 2021) and Scientific Freedom (R&L, 2023), holds a book contract with MIT Press and is negotiating another with Oxford University Press for monographs on personalized AI and the human right to science, and was recently invited to contribute a Comment to Nature.
Anna Puzio
Anna Puzio is a philosopher and ethicist of technology at the University of Twente in the Netherlands and a researcher in the Dutch “Ethics of Socially Disruptive Technologies” (ESDiT) programme. She has also worked in Munich, Vienna, Frankfurt, Oxford, Cambridge, and Berkeley. Her work on avatars, bots, and robots explores questions of the human and identity, relationships with the non-human (technology and nature), agency, grief (bots), New Materialism, religions, and diversity.
Paula Sweeney
Paula Sweeney is a senior lecturer in Philosophy. She joined the University of Aberdeen in 2009. Prior to that she completed her PhD at the University of St Andrews under the supervision of Crispin Wright. Paula was the Head of the School of Divinity, History, Philosophy and Art History from 2017-2022. Paula’s academic background is in the Philosophy of Language and the Philosophy of Logic. Now she works in the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence, particularly regarding AI avatars and social robots.
Anastasia Nefeli Vidaki
Anastasia Nefeli Vidaki is currently a PhD Candidate/ Researcher at the Cyber and Data Security Lab (CDSL), which is part of the Research Group on Law, Science, Technology & Society (LSTS) at the Faculty of Law and Criminology of Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). She completed her bachelor studies in Law in the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. During her studies, she spent a semester at the Faculty of Law of University of Cologne and carried through an internship at the Permanent Representation of Greece to the EU. She has also obtained a MsC on Law and ICT at the University of Piraeus (with distinction) and a LLM on Sociology of Law, Science and Technology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (with distinction). She is a qualified lawyer and member of the Bar Association of Piraeus, Greece. Before joining CDSL, she fulfilled the Bluebook traineeship at the Justice and Consumers Directorate of the European Commission, focusing on digitalization of justice. Her research interest focuses on legal and ethical concerns regarding ICT, digitalization and AI governance and policy.
Daniel E. Weissglass
Daniel E Weissglass is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Duke Kunshan University. His research focuses on the nature of the mind, its relationship to computation, and the implications that this relationship has for how we ought to live (ethics), live together (politics), and distribute property while doing so (normative economics). He has written about using math to figure out what thoughts mean, how the Talmud can inform constitutional interpretation, the need for enforcement mechanisms in global health law, and the use of AI to enhance health systems in low-resource settings. Recently, he has been working on what recent breakthroughs in AI can do to help us better understand ourselves and how we can use them in ways that help – and do not hurt – us.