WE'VE all entertained the fantasy of immortality at some point. Now, it seems there may be a way to live after you die, it’s just a hell of a lot creepier than we probably imagined it would be.

Have you ever wondered what happens to your social media profile when you die? It’s quite a morbid thought, granted, but when social media becomes a lasting representation of who we were and what we stood for, it puts those funny pictures of cats we’ve been posting in a different perspective.

Between my Facebook friends and Twitter followers, I now know several people who have died, leaving behind a permanent memorial of their lives. The thought of severing those digital ties with dormant accounts feels insensitive, and so we become tied to the people we once knew in a different way. Rather than the odd photo of an old friend that we stumble across with a smile, we now have access to a plethora of photographs, videos and comments, creating a shared digital space for the living to ponder the dead.

Some social media networks have already put in place processes to manage this. On Facebook, family members can request the "memorialisation" of an account following a death, which converts it into a memorial page, preserving it evermore. Twitter offers fewer options, allowing only for family members to request the deletion of an account. Meanwhile, Google lets users instruct it to consider them inactive if there has been no activity on their account for a certain period of time.

Furthermore, it’s becoming more common – and encouraged – to leave some form of digital instruction in a will. People can nominate a trusted person to be given passwords and access to all of their online accounts in order to manage them in a way of the deceased’s choosing. It could involve a request to delete all digital footprints, or it could ask the nominee to post pre-written messages to friends and followers.

So far so good – but here’s where it all gets a bit weird. In recent years a few new social networks have popped up offering digital immortality. Users can join up and use the network like any other. The software then uses artificial intelligence to create a mirror of the user, a cyber version of them, which learns their behaviour adequately to continue posting current updates after they’ve shaken off their mortal coil.

So if you’re not a Donald Trump fan, your avatar will learn the general trend of your views and contribute to online debate after you’ve gone. If you love One Direction, your mirror may continue posting new songs and updates about them – although I plead with all of you: don’t keep putting the rest of through that if you die …

These new social deathworks haven’t really taken off thus far, but it’s an indication of where our ideas are going. As odd as it may first appear, there are plenty of narcissistic personalities around to make this technology as fashionable as the selfie.

It takes us into the realms of using artificial intelligence to merge humans and machines. It’s the stuff of sci-fi, but it’s no longer impossible. Indeed, Google and Facebook are already developing AI technologies and robots. The automation revolution is coming, and the question of what happens to our social media profiles when we die provides unusual insight into how big thinkers are already thinking way ahead.

And if you’re struggling to wrap your head around all of that, you’re not going to like what’s coming next. It emerged recently that a former Uber/Google engineer, Anthony Levandowski, has founded a new religion based on the idea of worshipping an artificial intelligence god. The Way Of The Future church promotes “the realisation, acceptance, and worship of a Godhead based on artificial intelligence (AI) developed through computer hardware and software”.

As bizarre as it may seem, it throws up issues that we need to be considering. It’s believed AI could become so powerful in this century that computers will surpass the intelligence and cognitive ability of humans. They could become so efficient that they are better placed to make decisions about complex issues and offer guidance. Atheists often laugh at the notion of intelligent human beings worshipping fairytales in the sky, but if we could be captivated by it for thousands of years, is it really that far-fetched to imagine one day worshipping a machine as our ultimate guide?