We’ve seen it in movies, but can it be done in real life? Microsoft thinks they can reincarnate people digitally into a chat bot.
Instead of using the usual training for chat bots (conversations, gathering material from wide samples, etc.), they plan to use Microsoft’s patent (spotted by Ubergizmo) to create the chat bot from the output of that person.
According to a Forbes article, “the system would use “social data,” such as images, voice data, social media posts, electronic messages and written letters to build a profile of the person.”
All the social data will be used to recreate a person’s personality. Gathering all that will make the chat bot talk and interact like that specific person. It is even possible to have the chat bot sound like the individual using voice fonts. On top of all that, a 2D/3D model can be created using images, a greater depth of info, and videos.
The people chosen to be part of this innovation can be deceased or alive because, in the end, you are gathering parts of them to create the chat bot personality. That chat bot can also be the past or a present version of the person or someone can even create one for themselves before they die.
The parts of a personality that can be put into the chat bot is personal traits like style, diction, tone, voice, sentence length, topic, and consistency. If the chat bot doesn’t have enough data to keep the personality of the individual intact, they will use crowd-sourcing to fill the gaps.
One last part of this patent is that when it comes to handling profiles of someone who is deceased, it is almost “conscious” that they are imitating a person. If the chat bot is asked a question about an event that took place after they passed away they will be aware that they are deceased.
Microsoft seems to have this innovation in the bag and although there is no set release date on when this will be available to the public, it seems like loved ones can live on!
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