Microsoft patented a chatbot that would let you talk to dead people. It was too disturbing for the production

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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, relative, acquaintance, celebrity, fictional character, historical figure”, according to filing with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

The technology is reminiscent of a fictional app from the dystopian TV series “Black Mirror” that allowed a character to continue chatting with her boyfriend after he died in an accident, pulling information from his social media.

Want to talk music with David Bowie? Or get words of wisdom from your late grandmother? This tool would theoretically make that possible. But don’t get too excited or panicked about this question: the company has no plans to turn the technology into an actual product.

Tim O’Brien, general manager of AI programs at Microsoft, said in a Tweeter Friday that he “confirmed there was no plan for this”. In another Tweeter, he also echoed the sentiment of other netizens commenting on the tech, saying “yes, this is disturbing.”

This is how the technology would work if it were in fact incorporated into a product. According to patent information, the tool would remove “social data” such as images, social media posts, messages, voice data and written letters from the chosen person. This data would be used to train a chatbot to “converse and interact in the personality of the specific person”. It can also rely on external data sources, in case the user asks the bot a question that cannot be answered based on the person’s social data.

“Conversing in the personality of a specific person can include determining and / or using the conversational attributes of the specific person, such as style, diction, tone, voice, intention, length and sentence / dialogue complexity, topic and consistency, “as well as using behavioral attributes such as interests and opinions and demographic information such as age, gender and occupation, states the patent.

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

While Microsoft has no plans to create a product out of the technology, the patent says the possibilities of artificial intelligence have gone beyond creating fake people to creating virtual models of real people.
The Microsoft patent application was filed in April 2017, which O’Brien said on twitter predates the “AI Ethics Reviews We Do Today”. Today, the company has a responsible AI office and an AI, engineering and research ethics and effects committee, which help oversee its inventions.



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