Prefigured forgetting. Memory, the right to be forgotten and artificial intelligence

arXiv:2610.30402v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This inaugural keynote lecture surveys the state of the art of the right to be forgotten and examines how it is being transformed by artificial intelligence. Drawing on cognitive science, philosophy and the social sciences, it treats forgetting as a constitutive function of memory, and recalls that remembering the past and imagining the future share the same mechanism. It then reviews the origins, the European and national case law, and the paradoxes of the right, and offers a periodisation of the specialised literature between 2009 and 2026. The core claim is that digital memory has moved through three regimes, archive, search engine and generative model, and that the right was designed for the first two. In the third, personal information is no longer stored as a locatable record but inferred and regenerated. Artificial intelligence prefigures the frameworks of individual and collective remembering. The right to be forgotten thus ceases to be merely an individual ex post remedy and becomes a property to be designed and governed within legal and ethical ecosystems along the artificial intelligence value chain.

AI transforms the right to be forgotten, making personal info inferred and regenerated, potentially eroding individual control.

The article claims AI changes digital memory from stored records to inferred and regenerated data, challenging traditional legal rights like the right to be forgotten. This shift raises concerns about privacy and individual control but also offers a chance to redesign memory governance within AI systems. The implications are significant but not extreme or fully negative, with uncertainty about future outcomes.

This is a conceptual legal-philosophical analysis, not an empirical finding about harms or benefits. It identifies a real structural gap in privacy law regarding generative models, which is mildly concerning, but offers no measured outcome, only a reframing proposal.

The item claims AI fundamentally alters the 'right to be forgotten,' making traditional remedies obsolete. Generative models infer and regenerate personal information, rather than storing locatable records. This implies a significant loss of individual control over personal data and memory, as this right becomes a 'property to be designed and governed.'

The right to be forgotten is becoming obsolete as AI generates inferred personal information. This implies a loss of individual control over personal data. The shift requires new legal and ethical frameworks.

SOURCE     arXiv cs.CY (Computers and Society) (tier 1)
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DOCUMENT   93b27b3f-b3dc-4557-8af1-94ffc072b1bc
           https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.30402
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EVIDENCE   2 extracted excerpts
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MODEL RUN  5 runs, methodology 1.0.1
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SCORE      -45  (Adverse)
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CONFIDENCE 55%