In the 2013 Black Mirror episode Be Right Back, a grieving woman works with a digital re-creation of her deceased boyfriend.
BBC
‘A KI chatbot with which you can communicate with dead loved ones sounds like something that is directly from science fiction. But if technology in a patent granted to Microsoft comes into its own, the interaction with a sociable 3D digital version of the deceased may one day become mandatory.
The patent, entitled “Creating a conversation call from a specific chat bot of a specific person”, details a system that has access to images, voice data, social media messages, electronic messages and the like to create or edit a special index in the theme. of the person’s personality. “In some cases, images and videos can be used to create a 3D model of the person for extra realism.
This is especially challenging when you consider the patent’s proposition that the technology “matches a previous or current entity.”
The patent contains Dustin Abramson and Joseph Johnson, Jr. as inventors. Microsoft filed the patent in 2017, but it was granted this month and has become the subject of online chatter over the past few days due to the proposal of a chatbot that brings a ‘previous entity’ back to life as a kind interactive living memorial. No matter how frightening the idea may seem at first, many people who have lost a loved one will understand the ease that comes from watching old videos of the deceased, or listening to their archival voicemail. Death creates a sore hole that we long for.
However, Tim O’Brien, general manager of AI programs at Microsoft, confirmed on Twitter on Friday that “there is no plan for this.
“But if I ever get a job at Black Mirror,” he wrote, “I would know to go to the USPTO website for ideas on stories.”
Yes, I understand that, no worries. In any case, confirm that there is no plan for this. But if I ever get a job for Black Mirror, I’ll know I’m going to the USPTO website for story ideas.
– Tim O’Brien (@_TimOBrien) 22 January 2021
The British sci-fi series explored a similar concept of resurrecting the dead through technology in the gripping 2013 episode Be Right Back. In it, a grieving woman played by Hayley Atwell hires a service that enables her to communicate with a shockingly accurate AI re-creation of her deceased boyfriend, played by Domhnall Gleeson. This version is based on his previous online communication and social media profiles.
Similar scenarios have already made their way into real life, with holograms of celebrities such as Whitney houston and rapper Tupac Shakur. And in 2015, Eugenia Kuyda, co-founder and CEO of software company Replika, trained a chatbot on thousands of text messages she shared with her best friend Roman, who died in a car accident. In doing so, she created an immortal digital Roman who could still “talk” to family and friends.
That a company as prominent as Microsoft has outlined a system for the perpetuation of the dead through chatbots indicates that the practice may one day be much more accepted and used. But as my CNET colleague Alison DeNisco Rayome explores in this story, the question is, should we do it? And if we do, what should it look like? As the Black Mirror episode emphasizes, there are no easy answers.