A New Microsoft Patent Strongly Resembles A ‘Black Mirror’ Episode, And People Can’t Stop Pointing It Out

In the Black Mirror episode “Be Right Back,” Hayley Atwell’s character communicates with her dead boyfriend through an AI program that used his social media profiles, texts, and videos to essentially resurrect him virtually. Like all things Black Mirror, it’s a cautionary, dystopian tale, which is why people are freaking out over news that Microsoft is developing a chatbot that will basically do everything the episode warned society about. Namely using technology to talk to the freaking dead. Via The Independent:

The patent describes creating a bot based on the “images, voice data, social media posts, electronic messages”, and more personal information.

“The specific person [who the chat bot represents] may correspond to a past or present entity (or a version thereof), such as a friend, a relative, an acquaintance, a celebrity, a fictional character, a historical figure, a random entity etc”, it goes on to say.

Once news of Microsoft’s “I Talk To Dead People” chatbot reached Twitter, the reactions started pouring in as folks scrambled to drive home the point that Black Mirror is supposed to provide a warning about the dangers of technology infecting our lives, not hand-deliver an instruction manual for tech companies to point to and say, “Ah, yes, let’s do this. The bleak, creepy thing.”

— Andy Budd (@andybudd) January 22, 2021

We have now progressed from 'this sounds like an episode of Black Mirror' to 'that's literally series 2, episode 1 of Black Mirror' https://t.co/B3XxAgjglW

— Many A True Nerd (@ManyATrueNerd) January 22, 2021

when i’m dead keep me dead i do not want any of this black mirror shit pic.twitter.com/FZvRDCIkhX