Never a Bot is an interactive online and physical installation that invites individuals to formally declare their refusal to be digitally replicated after death.

The project centers on a downloadable, signable statement asserting the right to prevent one’s personal data — including messages, emails, posts, and images — from being used to create artificial intelligence chatbots or other posthumous digital simulations.

When it was first conceived in 2016, the statement referred only to "chatbots," reflecting the language and technological landscape of the time. In light of rapid advances in AI, the work’s implications now encompass a wider range of possible replications, from voice and likeness models to generative identity simulations.

The idea emerged in response to an article in The Verge, on Eugenia Kuyda, who built a chatbot using the archived communications of her deceased friend. By translating that premise into an accessible, opt-out format, Never a Bot engages with questions of privacy, consent, and digital legacy in the age of intelligent systems.

The project debuted as part of the exhibition Science Fiction – New Parallel Worlds at the Nikola Tesla Technical Museum in Zagreb, Croatia, in November 2016, created by Ana Labudović and Dominik Markušić Gross. Online submissions were automatically printed on paper slips and deposited into a transparent box within the exhibition space, transforming intangible digital choices into a visible accumulation of dissent.

By juxtaposing the ephemeral nature of online consent with a tangible, accumulating record, Never a Bot invites reflection on the persistence of personal data, the ethics of posthumous identity, and the shifting boundaries between human memory and machine simulation.