Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton (b. 1946, Sevier County, Tennessee) is arguably the most beloved figure in American music — writer of “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You,” star of 9 to 5, founder of Dollywood and the Imagination Library, with a catalog of thousands of songs and a rare ability to be claimed by every side of the culture.

Refusing digital immortality

Asked at a July 2023 London press conference — announcing her Rockstar album — whether she would follow ABBA’s avatar show and live on as a hologram, Parton declined in explicitly spiritual terms: she has left a great body of work behind, but wants no high-tech recreation that would leave her soul “grounded” on earth. She joked that everything about her — including “any intelligence” — was artificial anyway.

The refusal was characteristically gentle but pointed at a real industry trend: posthumous holograms, AI vocal resurrections and estate-licensed digital doubles were becoming a business, from the touring Whitney Houston hologram to AI-restored vocals. Parton — otherwise famously tech-friendly, having funded COVID vaccine research and embraced streaming-era reinvention — drew her line at digital immortality, one of the few artists to reject the practice before being asked to consent to it.

She has not campaigned against AI, signed protest letters or sued anyone; her objection is personal and theological rather than political. That distinguishes her from peers who fight AI as labor or property theft — Parton’s concern is what a synthetic Dolly would mean for the real one’s soul.