Microsoft has patented a chatbot that allows you to chat with dead people. It was too disturbing for production

Microsoft has patented a chatbot that allows you to chat with dead people. It was too disturbing for production

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A patent granted to Microsoft (MSFT) last month details a method for creating a chat chat modeled after a specific person – a “past or present entity … like a friend, relative, acquaintance, celebrity, fictional character, historical figure” , according to the filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

The technology is reminiscent of a fictional app from the dystopian TV series “Black Mirror”, which allowed a character to continue talking to her boyfriend after he died in an accident, pulling information from their social networks.

Do you want to talk about music with David Bowie? Or did you get some words of wisdom from your late grandmother? This tool would theoretically make this possible. But don’t get too excited or freaked out about it: the company is not planning on turning the technology into a real product.

Tim O’Brien, general manager of AI programs at Microsoft, said in a tweet on Friday he “confirmed that there are no plans for that”. In a separate tweet, he also echoed the sentiment of other Internet users when commenting on the technology, saying, “yes, it is disturbing.”

See how the technology would work if it were actually incorporated into a product. According to the patent information, the tool would collect “social data”, such as images, social media posts, messages, voice data and written letters from the chosen individual. This data would be used to train a chatbot to “talk and interact in the personality of a specific person”. It could also rely on external data sources if the user asked the bot a question that could not be answered based on the person’s social data.

“Talking to a specific person’s personality may include determining and / or using conversation attributes of the specific person, such as style, diction, tone, voice, intention, length / complexity of the sentence / dialogue, topic and consistency”, as well as using attributes behavioral, such as interests and opinions, and demographic information, such as age, sex and profession, says the patent.

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In some cases, the tool can even be used to apply facial and speech recognition algorithms to recordings, images and videos to create a voice and a 2D or 3D model of the person to enhance the chatbot.

Although Microsoft has no plans to create a product from this technology, the patent indicates that the possibilities of artificial intelligence have gone beyond the creation of fake people to create virtual models of real people.
Microsoft’s patent application was filed in April 2017, which O’Brien said on Twitter it predates the “AI ethics analysis we do today”. Today, the company has a responsible AI Office and an AI, Ethics and Effects Committee in Engineering and Research, which help to oversee its inventions.

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