AI-DIGITAL HUMAN AS A NEW CLASS OF DIGITAL LAW SUBJECT: TYPOLOGY, CRITERIA OF LEGAL PERSONHOOD, AND A REGISTRATION MODEL IN DIGITAL ECOSYSTEMS

Nataliia Onyshchenko; Oleksii Kostenko

doi:10.69635/mssl.2026.2.4.63

Authors

Nataliia Onyshchenko D.Sc. (Law), Professor, Academician, National Academy of Legal Sciences of Ukraine; Deputy Director of the V.M. Koretsky Institute of State and Law of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; Honoured Lawyer of Ukraine Author https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1671-2139
Oleksii Kostenko Candidate of Legal Sciences (PhD in Law), Associate Professor, State Research Institution "Institute of Information, Security and Law" of the National Academy of Legal Sciences of Ukraine Author https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2131-0281

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.69635/mssl.2026.2.4.63

Keywords:

Artificial Intelligence Legal Personhood; Digital Human; Digihuman; Digiperson; AI Regulation

Abstract

This article argues for a new class of digital legal subject within AI legal-personhood doctrine — the ‘AI-digital human’ — largely unaddressed in domestic and international legal scholarship. Building on the author’s earlier three-class model of AI legal subjects and the institution of the AI-representative, the article distinguishes two different modules of the AI-digital human: Module 1 (Digiperson), a digital human as a functional reflection of a specific natural person, built on ‘red-group’ identification attributes and digitised access credentials; and Module 2 (autonomous Digihuman), reflecting no real natural person, its attributes formed referentially and tied to a functional role within a digital ecosystem. The article shows that equating a digital human with a natural person in the full scope of rights and obligations is a doctrinal error: legal status should follow an age-based logic (child—adolescent—adult) rather than mirroring the prototype’s status. Drawing on a comparative analysis of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (AI Act) and Regulation (EU) 2024/1183 (eIDAS 2.0), the article substantiates the need for a Digital Humans Registry as an institutional legitimation mechanism for both modules, and formulates draft articles for the Ukrainian Law on Artificial Intelligence.

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