Black Mirror fanatics were distraught when they found out that their beloved Netflix series wouldn’t renew for season six just yet. In fact, the show’s creator, Charlie Booker, made headlines when the Radio Times reported that “he’s not sure if audiences could stomach another season at the moment” due to all the craziness the world has faced over the past year and the fact that the world’s current reality hits way too close to the dark idiosyncrasies of the actual series.
In what many would say sounds like a major plot twist on the incredibly dark show, the fact that this could be an actual reality is quite concerning, but what is “this” is exactly? Tech giant Microsoft has recently filed for a patent to create software that will allow them to “revive” some sort of semblance of a person that has died in order to use that version and make them into conversational chatbots. Creepy, we know.
While the Microsoft patent explains how they will harvest “social data” including voice data, images, social media posts, emails, text messages, user profile and behavioral data, written letters, geo-location data, transactional data and more in order to “modify a personalized chat index in the theme of certain person’s personality. This personality may resemble anyone for whom enough social data can be found and could also be a historical figure, a fictional character, or a celebrity.”
What this really means is that Microsoft hopes to bring the idea of “data mining” even further, by planning on taking digital breadcrumbs so to speak, from individuals’ information left online or on their computer devices even after they die. They will then use all that “left behind” information to create lifelike character-versions of people’s mannerisms, behaviors and personalities to make them as human-like as possible to use to chat with the living.
It’s important to understand that not all patents become actual finished products. In fact, most tech giant and other huge corporations create endless amounts of invention copyrights every single year. But what these patents tell us is that they are created in the hopes that one day, these ideas could possibly transpire into actual realities in the future. That means Microsoft believes that there is some major potential to strike gold with the idea of bringing people back from the dead, even if they are computer generated chatbots. Just look at the first generation of celebrity holograms.
The major question here is, would the average person even want a chatbot of themselves helping guide consumers through some sort of user interface in the first place? While having a chatbot that resembled Einstein or even Elvis might be cool, would you want to “chat” with the image of your dead grandfather or deceased family friend? We didn’t think so.
Radio Times also notes that many of Black Mirror’s plot twists have been frighteningly prophetic in some ways. In one particular episode on the show, Miley Cyrus plays a pop singer that has been algorithmically stimulated by her record label so that when she dies, the company can still make money off of her and her “likeness.” Yup, scary stuff. Especially when it seems like Microsoft has plans to do something kind of similar.
Whether Microsoft is getting its future ideas from the show or it’s just pure coincidence, the company is obviously willing to spend big bucks on research and development in order to actually explore the idea of themed chatbots from people’s actual personalities. But again, the question remains, will people be willing to, number one, have a chatbot of themselves created after they die? And two, actually chat with a digital version of someone they love that died? For now, only the future will tell.
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