Microsoft patent allows us to talk to deceased people

A cool episode of Twilight Zone that first aired 60 years ago focused on a young boy (played by Bill Mumy) who frustrated his parents by insisting that he talk to his grandmother daily on the toy phone which she gave to him just before her death. When her grieving and upset mother finally grabs the phone to throw it away, she is startled by her mother’s voice on the line.

The episode touched on the longing we all share to talk one last time with a loved one who is no longer with us.

If a newly released Microsoft patent is established, we will be able to see, hear, and talk to family members. Or more accurately, with 3D motion pictures, complete with realistic voice reconstruction and clear personality traits scraped from the disc of the individual’s communication on social media platforms. In short, a chat bot.

‘Creating a Conversational Chat Bot of a Specific Person’ is the dry but accurate title of a patent that Dustin Abramson and Joseph Johnson Jr. from Microsoft in 2017 and was approved this month.

The patent states that the chatbot can use information collected from posts on social media, images, voice data, electronic messages, written letters and other personal data provided by the individual or others acting on behalf of the individual “to be in the personality of the specific person. ‘

Users can chat with deceased people, ask questions about important events in their lives or just call to say they like them. This can be done via a mobile phone, computer or with personal assistants like Alexa or Siri.

If a user asks a question for which there is little or no concrete data, AI and machine learning processes will be typed during the conversation with the chatbot to construct logical and probable answers. According to the patent, this can be achieved by relying on ‘crowd-based perceptions’ and ‘psychographic data’.

Prior voice recordings combined with speech synthesis would be used to create a ‘voice fonts’, and collected images, even if only in 2-D, could be converted to a 3D motion from depth information deleted from old photos.

Sophisticated roadside models can enable users to talk to a person of different ages, as a stimulating young person starting a new career or as a wise citizen thinking about a lifetime.

The idea of ​​bringing the dead into digital life is not new.

Michael Jackson ‘performed’ at the Billboard Music Awards in 2014 five years after his death thanks to emerging holographic technology.

CGI renditions of Peter Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin and Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia still appear in Star Wars movies. And the recently completed war film “Finding Jack” plays a CGI-enhanced James Dean, the teenage god who died in a car accident in 1955 at the height of his popularity.

Last fall, Kanye West gave his wife, Kim Kardashian West, a hologram of her late father, a defense attorney, in the infamous OJ Simpson murder trial. The hologram father ‘talked’ to Kim about her decision to become a lawyer and continue his legacy. (It is also not surprising that he exuberantly praises Kanye, “the most, the most, the most, most genius man in the whole world.”

Microsoft’s proposal differs from the examples. This would be the first time a bot has been equipped with data harvested from social media data.

The idea has taken hold in technological circles. Eternime.ai aims to preserve a digital copy of you for future generations. AI avatars armed with memories and stories of participants link with social media accounts and portable devices that make it possible to engage in conversations with family members.

Following this, AI conducts extensive interviews with individuals and sets up a digital storage bin with information that will be available to family members in the future.

According to the patent, the chat bots are not just limited to family members. They can be a ‘friend, a family member, an acquaintance, an acquaintance, a fictional character, a historical figure’ or even ‘a random entity’.

The concept will certainly raise ethical issues. Without clear permission to use specific types of data, who sets the boundaries of what personal data and images are suitable for use, possibly forever? What accuracy check will there be? And what about ‘deep fakes’ in which realistic avatars are produced by political enemies or criminal enterprises trying to mislead the targeted audiences?

All we know is that if a child or family member of yours chats on a cell phone with a deceased family member or friend, there is no reason to be afraid.

© 2021 Science X Network