Physical and Digital GenAI Avatars: Do Interactive Representations of Individual Human Persons Have Agency and Moral Responsibility?

As either physical or digital interactive representations of human beings, avatars with generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI Avatars) raise significant philosophical challenges because they question our traditional frameworks in which we talk about agency and the attribution of moral responsibility. Can we ascribe any form of agency to GenAI Avatars, or are we witnessing a new form of agency that is emerging at the intersection of humans and their interactive representations which can be deployed in various physical or digital spaces? Drawing from the broader discussion on the topic within Human-Robot Interaction and machine/robot ethics, the aim of this workshop is to explore potential forms of avatar agency and to analyze the normative implications for attributions of moral and legal responsibility. The workshop will combine conceptual analysis with practical examples of state-of-art humanoid robotic avatar systems and applications of health avatars in medicine.