Digital Replica - Bryant McGill

# Digital Replica **Domain:** Digital Afterlife / Identity / Synthetic Media **Doc Type:** Canonical Concept **Maturity:** Developed **Evidence / Concept Status:** Established legal-policy term ## Definition A **Digital Replica** is a machine-generated representation of an identifiable person's voice, visual likeness, or other identity attributes. ## Continuity Significance Replica law governs whether human-like outputs are protected identity, licensed representation, property-like rights, or something capable of becoming a more persistent agent. ## Existing Architecture / Evidence U.S. federal proposals and state laws regulate unauthorized AI-generated likenesses, including postmortem interests. ## Evidentiary Boundary / Red-Team Note Digital-replica rights generally protect the human right holder or estate; they do not confer rights on the replica itself. ## Cinematic Case [[wiki/The Congress (2013)|The Congress]] is the vault's foundational case for a reusable performance model that achieves representational persistence without establishing consciousness or person-level continuity. ## Related Ontology [[wiki/Posthumous Digital Replica|Posthumous Digital Replica]] · [[wiki/Digital Replica Property Framing|Digital Replica Property Framing]] · [[wiki/NO FAKES Act of 2026|NO FAKES Act of 2026]] · [[wiki/Digital Replica to Rights-Bearing Subject|Digital Replica to Rights-Bearing Subject]] · [[wiki/The Congress (2013)|The Congress]] ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > "In principle, a good physics simulator could, very slowly, simulate a brain and its environment." > **— Scott Draves**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Simulation/A Physics Simulator Could Simulate a Brain by Scott Draves|A Physics Simulator Could Simulate a Brain by Scott Draves]] > "We can back-up petabytes of sili-brains perfectly in seconds, but transfer of information between carbo-brains takes decades and the similarity between the copies is barely recognizable. Some speculate that we could translate from carbo to sili, and even get the sili version to behave like the original. However, such a task requires much deeper understanding than merely making a copy." > **— George Church**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Mind Upload/Copying a Brain Requires More Than Copying Its Information by George Church|Copying a Brain Requires More Than Copying Its Information by George Church]] > "A human download can think as fast as an AI, and compete with AI's if the human download wants too." > **— Frank Tipler**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Mind Upload/Human Downloads Could Compete With AI by Frank Tipler|Human Downloads Could Compete With AI by Frank Tipler]] ## Sources / Provenance - https://www.copyright.gov/legislation/  ## Deep-Time Continuity Interface This node is audited through [[wiki/Deep Time Continuity|Deep Time Continuity]] for future control-surface conversion, ontological drift, succession, irreversibility, due process, and resource incidence. The backlink records analytical relevance; it does not establish continuity intent in the present rule or institution.