Microsoft is one of the leaders in the technology & innovation industry. The company has always believed in giving the best of tech to its customers. But this time, it looks like Microsoft is going to outdo their previous exploits and will make it possible to have a virtual conversation with a deceased loved one or anyone for that matter. Internet was quick to compare it with that episode of ‘Black Mirror’ where exact same (kind of) technology was used by the protagonist to continue chatting with her deceased boyfriend. This was possible due to the information available from social media and their chats.
A patent granted to Microsoft (MSFT) last month details a method for creating a conversational chatbot modeled after a specific person — a “past or present entity … such as a friend, a relative, an acquaintance, a celebrity, a fictional character, a historical figure,” according to the filing with the US Patent and Trademark Office as reported by CNN.
Using this tech, you can talk to your deceased relative, virtual person, or any celebrity for that matter.
Many people have called this step very ‘disturbing’. Clearing the air on the matter, Microsoft GM of AI programs, Tim O’Brien has tweeted that they have no plan for this in near future. In a separate tweet, he agreed with internet users commenting on the technology, saying, “yes, it’s disturbing.”
“Conversing in the personality of a specific person may include determining and/or using conversational attributes of the specific person, such as style, diction, tone, voice, intent, sentence/dialogue length and complexity, topic and consistency,” as well as using behavioral attributes such as interests and opinions and demographic information such as age, gender, and profession, the patent states.
