Chatbots That Resurrect The Dead – Is That Legally A Good Idea?

How would you feel if your loved one is turned into a chatbot after the demise? 

Chatbots have made their place in every industry. It's convenient for the customers to interact with the business, cost-efficient for the business, and generates insightful data. Shockingly, it was recently revealed that in 2017 Microsoft patented a chatbot that, when built, will digitally resurrect the dead. With the help of AI and machine learning, this chatbot would give life to our digital personas for our friends and family to talk to. But after a while, Microsoft representatives admitted that the idea was disturbing and they're putting the plan on hold for now. 

But the fact that there are technical tools that can give life to our personal data online after we're deceased is freaky. AI chatbots have already passed Alan Turing's Turing Test which means that the chatbots are capable of tricking humans into thinking the bot is a human. And with everyone in the modern world leaving behind floods of data, this freaky concept might actually become a reality, even by accident. 

Currently, there are no laws against digital incarnation. Is that concerning? Well, your right to data and privacy after you die is not as secure as you think and there is no way you can redact your digital footprints. This legal ambiguity gives opportunity to companies that make chatbots capable of bringing you back to life, digitally. 

Microsoft's chatbot could use your emails and messages to create a digital personality for you after you die. By using machine learning to respond to texts as you would, your friends and family will still be able to connect with you. On a scale of 1-10, you can rate how scary that thought is for yourself. And if you're someone who uses a lot of voice notes to communicate, that too can be used to mimic your voice by the bot. 

Microsoft isn't the only company that thought of this concept. Eternime is another AI company that built a chatbot that collects information like geolocation, motion, activities, photos, and Facebook data and allows the user to create an avatar for themselves which the bot will use once the user passes away. If such chatbots and holograms become a reality, then we will need new laws to govern them. And rightfully so, because..think about it, can the person actually rest in peace knowing a digital avatar is taking over the person's connections? 

The Need For Unified Laws & Ethics 

Every nation's law is flimsy when it comes to how your data can be used after your death. For example, the data privacy laws in the EU only protect the rights of the living. On the other hand, countries like Estonia, France, Italy, and Latvia have laws on postmortem data. 

Most of our digital footprint is controlled by private platforms like Facebook and Google. This control is based on the terms of service that pop up when we sign up and create profiles. Some initiatives from their end like Google's Inactive Account Manager and Facebook's Legacy Contact are attempting to address the issue of postmortem data rights. It is allowing users to assign the responsibility of deleting one's profile on these platforms to someone they trust. 

There might come a future where private companies might ask us to choose between abandoning our deceased one's information or pay them to have them digitally revived and turn it into a bot. This is a disturbing thought for now, but who knows what's to come? It's probably time governing bodies look into this matter.