Microsoft To Resurrect Humans Into Chat Bot After Death

No one can claim to truly know where we go after death. Or even what happens to our desires, dreams, and most intimate thoughts. However, Microsoft might have some ideas.

Microsoft was offered a patent, titled “Creating a Conversational Chat Bot of a Specific Person,” by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The patent offered to Microsoft is similar to a Dystopian Plotline

As keen observers have explained, since Microsoft was granted the patent, the chatbot could be founded on a deceased family member or friend. In the episode of Black Mirror, a widow chats with a version of her deceased husband through a service offered by a fictional tech firm. The Twilight Zone health with a similar topic back in the 60s. Basically, the idea is modeling a chatbot based on the person in question and permitting them to have a conversion with other persons through a computer.

The issue of lack of regulation has surrounded post-Mortem data

With such technology, it is with no doubt that this will bring the question regarding regulations and ethics of post-mortem data.  There is no regulation of people’s data after their death will mean that any person can collect a deceased person’s data and offer it to a service provider. The service provider will, from the data, create a chatbot. This will happen even without consent from at least the relatives or close persons to the deceased.

Some key questions are, will things remain as they are in the future? Will regulations permit companies to make digital versions of humans without any prior consent? Will the companies take the duty of consent to themselves.

We can’t guess what psychological effects this may have.  Patent filings do not always result in a product; thus, whether Microsoft’s idea will be brought to life is still unclear.