Digital Twins: The Guardians of Identity — or Our Greatest Vulnerability?
What if you had the ultimate advocate for your life? A digital twin could revolutionize how we live, but at what cost?
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As AI evolves to create personal digital twins, are we ready to embrace the benefits — or wrestle with the risks of cybercrime and inequality?
If you had the ultimate advocate — a foolproof accounting of your life, choices, experiences, health — would you use it?
While the concept of having an AI-powered digital twin is new, it’s a regular staple has taken root in the tech sector across various industries. Researchers are working to extend this concept to the next frontier: us.
What Is a Digital Twin, and Why Should We Care?
A digital twin is near perfect duplicate of an environment or idea. For example, when you recreate the exact real-world circumstances in a virtual environment to run an experiment or to test software, that’s a digital twin concept. It’s just called something different, such as a controlled environment or a sandbox.
A personal AI-powered digital twin is a far more intimate manifestation. This assistant would live with (or within) you from birth. Whether it’s a wearable or an implant, it would continually collect data about you, such as:
- Recording health metrics. It would know your genetic data and recommend the best options for you, including lifestyle changes or even the best treatment forms. We already see this with those smart watches and other IoT (Internet of Things) paraphernalia.
- Understanding your behavioral patterns. Not only would it guide you on the best course for your emotional well-being and mental health, but it may also pick up on behavioral patterns that help predict physical illnesses.
- Preserving your legacy — Everyone’s memories and experiences are unique, but for some, the ability to recall or validate key moments is a challenge. Your AI digital twin would be a personal historian and your most trusted advocate for your decisions and wishes.
Your digital twin would have the ability to contextualize your experiences across all aspects of your life by providing insights, anticipating needs, and even acting as a digital legacy when you’re gone.
It’s a fascinating idea whose time is now as researchers are drawing on and combining AI, data analytics, and IoT to create the first mockups of a personal digital twin.
One story showed how having a digital twin saved someone’s life. Researcher Ghislaine Boddington in her BBC documentary Me and My Digital Twin share the Story of how another researcher diagnosed with a brain tumor had helped surgeons excise the tumor with precision and minimal invasiveness.
While the application for this technology could usher in the next human evolution, there’s one intersection we have to address: Identity Theft.
A Foolproof Advocate — Or a Hack Waiting to Happen?
As amazing as it is to have this technology as your eyes and ears, we live in an era where bad actors are getting bolder and more sophisticated in their crimes.
The FTC reported that identity theft accounts for about 25% of its 5.7 million reported cases in 2024–which was 1 million more cases than 2023.
How could a digital twin make us more vulnerable?
- It’s a single point of failure. It’s the epitome of putting all your eggs in one basket. Any breach means that bad actors have your data and they control everything.
- Deep Fakes. Your likeness, your life, your being could be cloned. The world is already having this problem when the bad guys only have a sliver of your information where deep fakes impersonate others and aren’t detected until it’s too late.
- Unintended Data Correlation. Just because they don’t have your twin, doesn’t mean that identity thieves can’t match you based on the smallest set of details about you, such as shopping habits, community routes, and other data.
There is so much that could go wrong, but let’s talk about the less doom-and-gloom side of the coin.
Identity Theft: Can a Digital Twin Protect Us?
The Ultimate Biometric Security.
Right now, we rely on 2FA (two-factor authentication), and it can be cumbersome and annoying. An AI digital twin knows you down to the most minute quirks and behavioral patterns. This hyper-personalization makes it the ultimate biometric security.
Proactive Defense
Your digital twin is constantly gathering your data and acting on behalf of you in the world. We’re talking bank account information, spending patterns, as well as endogenous patterns such as heart rate, pulse, blood sugar. If certain patterns don’t match, your digital twin flags it immediately giving you the best options for moving forward.
Decentralizing your data
By now we’ve all heard of blockchain, whether we understand it or not is another story. Blockchain is all about putting your eggs in multiple secure baskets, so that if they only get one basket, they only get a few of your eggs. Digital twins could push for systems where personal data isn’t stored in centralized locations (like servers, which are vulnerable to breaches). Instead, it could use blockchain-like systems to secure and decentralize information, ensuring only the twin itself has access
Guardrails for the Future of AI-Powered Assistants
To make these personal AI assistants even more secure against cyber fraud,
Ownership
Ensuring that the digital twin is under the full care, custody, and control of the human without question or condition is the first step. The last thing anyone wants is for some company to have a claim on anyone’s PII (Personally Identifiable Information) because of licensing or hosting fine print.
Encryption
There could be a system of secret code key combinations like they used back in WWII where, if someone stole the letter, they needed the code thread to read it. Applying an equivalent concept like this to an AI digital twin can increase security.
Continual Vigilance
The idea of an AI that grows up with you is cute, but there needs to be a “grown-up” part continuously monitors the growing threat of under 19 identity theft which accounts for 2% of all reports
Oversight
This is a tricky one because we see that governments can barely agree on the AI tech we already have. If we can come up with a fundamental right/benefit all can agree on, there is a chance to create a template solution. When this technology reaches a certain point, the rules aren’t restarted from scratch and confusion.
These are just some of the guardrails needed to make this technology safer. But there are a couple of other lesser known issues that need attention:
The Inequality Problem: Who Gets Access?
Our deepening stratification along multiple lines is laid bare daily. If it’s not fake news, it’s fake history and my personal favorite, revisionism. Whether we’re talking about developed and developing nations, BIPOC and Caucasian, LGBTQ+ and Heteronormatives, we see different access to technology and opportunities.
Having broad, global access to this type of technology not only creates a much richer and more accurate accounting of human history–and not just the skewed version written by the “victors” — but it also makes it less vulnerable.
Who wants to buy something everyone already has?
Safeguard or Vulnerability?
As a GenX-er, I may not live to see the full potential of this Digital Twin concept. This feels like a GenZ or Gen Alpha conversation — but I’m here for it. The idea of an AI-powered twin helping us live longer, more meaningful lives? Sign me up. My optimistic side sees this as the ultimate safeguard for our humanity, provided we put the right guardrails in place.
That’s the hopeful view. My realistic side? It’s skeptical. The politics of bigotry and misinformation are booming, with no sign of slowing down. Wherever businesses can profit from personal data with impunity, they will. That creates yet another layer of inequality, leaving cybercrime to thrive.
At the end of the day, smarter minds than mine will need to figure out the rules and systems to ensure Digital Twins benefit humanity while mitigating risks. Still, I can’t help but wonder: are we ready for this kind of tech — or will we fall into the same traps of profit over ethics?
What’s your take? Is a digital twin a safeguard against identity theft — or the ultimate vulnerability?
Post was originally shared on Medium
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