Microsoft patent details tech that could turn dead people into AI chatbots

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An AI chatbot that lets you interact with dead loved ones sounds like something straight out of science fiction. But if technology in a patent granted to Microsoft comes to fruition, interacting with a chatty 3D digital version of the deceased could one day become de rigueur.

The patent, titled "Creating a conversational chatbot of a specific chatbot of a specific person," details a system that would access images, voice data, social media posts, electronic messages and the like to "create or modify a special index in the theme of the specific person's personality." In some cases, images and video could be used to create a 3D model of the person for extra realism.

It's an especially provocative notion when you consider the patent's suggestion that the tech "may correspond to a past or present entity."

That a company as prominent as Microsoft has outlined a system for immortalizing the dead through chatbots suggests the practice could someday become far more widely 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 highlights, there are no easy answers.

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