Microsoft patented a chatbot that allowed talking to 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 conversational chatbot based on a specific person: a “past or present entity … such as a friend, relative, acquaintance, celebrity, fictional character, historical figure.” according to filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The technology is reminiscent of a fictional application of the dystopian TV series “Black Mirror” that allowed a character to continue chatting with her boyfriend after dying in an accident, by extracting information from their social networks.

Want to talk music with David Bowie? Or get some words of wisdom from your late grandmother? This tool would theoretically make it possible. But don’t get excited or scared – the company has no plans to turn technology into a real product.

Tim O’Brien, CEO of Microsoft’s AI programs, said in a tweet on Friday that “confirmed that there is no plan for this.” In a section tweet, also echoed the sentiment of other Internet users commenting on the technology saying, “yes, it’s disturbing.”

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

“Conversing in a specific person’s personality may include determining and / or using that person’s specific conversation attributes, such as style, diction, tone, voice, intent, length, and sentence / dialogue complexity. , theme and coherence “, as well as using behavioral attributes such as interests and opinions and demographic information such as age, gender and profession, according to the patent.

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

While Microsoft has no plans to create a product from technology, the patent indicates that the possibilities of artificial intelligence have shifted from creating fake people to creating virtual models of real people.
The Microsoft patent application was filed in April 2017, which O’Brien he said on Twitter it predates the “ethical reviews of AI we do today.” The company currently has a responsible AI office and an AI, ethics and effects committee in engineering and research, which help oversee its inventions.

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