Digital immortality vs digital legacy
The two phrases are often mixed up. A digital legacy is about what you leave and who looks after it. Digital immortality, as people use it, is about still being able to ask. Most families need to think about both.
Digital legacy: what you leave
Your digital legacy is everything that exists of you on devices and online: photos, emails, social media accounts, documents, voice notes, chats. Planning for it means deciding:
- which accounts should be closed, kept or memorialised;
- who may access your photos and files;
- what should be passed on to whom, and what should be deleted.
Apple's Legacy Contact, Google's Inactive Account Manager and Facebook's memorialisation settings are digital legacy tools.
Digital immortality: being able to ask
The phrase usually refers to something more interactive: a way to keep how a person talked so that others can still ask them things and hear an answer in their style. Today this means AI copies built from a person's own answers, writing and recordings. We think "immortality" overstates it, as we explain in what is digital immortality; it is a way of remembering, not of living on.
The differences at a glance
| Digital legacy | Interactive memory (AI copy) | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Pass on and protect what exists | Keep how someone talked, so the family can ask |
| Content | Files, accounts, photos, messages | Answers, stories, opinions, voice |
| Who makes it | Mostly the person, through settings and a will | The person and their family, together |
| Main risk | Things lost, or seen by the wrong people | False expectations, misuse of a voice |
| Key decision | Who gets access | Consent, and who looks after the copy |
Where they meet
An AI copy is itself part of a digital legacy. That raises the same questions: who may talk with it after you are gone, who can delete it, what happens to it if the company closes. In OtherMy these are answered by guardians: people you choose who look after your copy if something happens to you, and who can do nothing while you are here. You also get messages for the future, delivered on a date or after you are gone, which sit squarely in legacy planning.
A simple plan for both
- List your accounts and set legacy contacts where services offer them.
- Gather what matters: photos, voice notes, letters, in one place your family can reach.
- Record your own answers, or a parent's, to the questions your family will one day want to ask.
- Choose guardians for anything personal, including an AI copy.
- Make sure everything can be downloaded or deleted. Avoid services that lock your data in.
In short
A digital legacy protects what you leave. A copy keeps something of how you talked. Done carefully, they work together: your family gets your files and your stories, and the right people are in charge of both.
Keep their voice while you can still ask
OtherMy helps you save a parent's stories, their way of talking and their voice, together with your family. It starts with a short conversation of six questions.
Coming to the App Store for iPhone and iPad. Free to start.