Somewhere on the list of “things that are probably a spectacularly bad idea” is the concept of using a persons online/digital footprint to create a ‘copy’ of them. But just because something is obvious doesn’t mean that big tech won’t rush into it. On December 1, 2020 Microsoft filed a patent on the concept of “Creating a Conversational Chat Bot of a Specific Person”. Because really, what is a better ending to 2020 than filing a patent for something that was literally a Black Mirror episode. Setting aside the absolute absurdity of being able to patent such an obvious extension of existing technology, who on earth thinks this is a good idea?
Science fiction is full of examples of this idea from Tony Stark working through his grief over his long dead parents.
To Joi the virtual girlfriend in Bladerunner 2049
As with Deep Fake software this new ‘Chat Bot Imitating a Specific Person’ is bringing along with it a bag of ethical questions. Maybe we will see this used to imitate historic characters – something like an interactive “Hall of the Presidents“. But when it comes to copying living people, or people we have known using social media is going to be very problematic.
Creating a copy of a person using their online persona will have very little resemblance to that person. Sure you might get the voice and the picture right, but as the Black Mirror episode explored, we are not our genuine selves online. Our online presences are personae — carefully crafted works of fiction that more or less resemble who we would like the world to believe that we are. How this could possibly translate into a reasonable proximity of a real person is anyone’s guess (my guess is very poorly)