ABSTRACT
The emergence of artificial intelligence, digital platforms, and data driven technologies has fundamentally challenged the traditional legal assumption that privacy extinguishes upon death. While Indian constitutional jurisprudence unequivocally recognises privacy as an intrinsic facet of human dignity under Article 21, judicial precedents have consistently treated it as a purely personal right incapable of surviving or being inherited after death. This paper argues that such a position, developed in a pre digital era, has become increasingly inadequate in a world where an individual’s digital identity, behavioural data, communications, reputation, and commercially valuable digital assets continue to exist long after physical death. By critically examining the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, particularly its nomination framework under section 14, alongside comparative jurisprudence, succession law, and emerging artificial intelligence technologies capable of creating enduring digital replicas, this paper demonstrates that the real constitutional inquiry is not whether privacy itself is inheritable, but whether the human dignity from which privacy derives its constitutional legitimacy continues to warrant protection after death. It argues that dignity, unlike privacy, offers a principled constitutional foundation for recognising a limited posthumous protection over an individual’s digital persona, thereby reconciling informational privacy with digital inheritance while addressing the jurisprudential challenges posed by artificial intelligence and digital immortality.
Gupta, Shresht, Reimagining Posthumous Privacy: Digital Inheritance, Artificial Intelligence, and Human Dignity (August 2, 2026).
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