Anyone who's seen the show knows that this is not what happened. Instead, it's a somewhat humorous misconfiguration of the details--sorta like listening to a friend misremember a series that they haven't seen in awhile. In a different conversation, I asked ChatGPT how the TV show Gilligan's Island ended. In reality, Gilligan's Island was cancelled by its network, so there was no ending.

The idea of chatbots based on dead people raises several ethical questions surrounding privacy. People only share so much on social media, so algorithms relying on that would be flawed. Humans are also highly complex and influenced by experiences that aren't always shared via text messages. Microsoft's patent suggests that the company could use crowdsourced data to fill in any gaps. In other words, the resulting chatbot could end up saying things the person never said.

Last April, Google cofounder Sergey Brin wrote to shareholders with a warning about the potential downsides of artificial intelligence. In June, Google CEO Sundar Pichai released a set of guiding principles for its AI projects after employee protests forced him to abandon a Pentagon contract creating algorithms to interpret drone footage. Now Google has released a white paper that asks governments to suggest some rules for AI--but please, not too many! As you might expect, the 30-page document Google released last week extols the power of artificial intelligence. "AI can deliver great benefits for economies and society, and support decision making which is fairer, safer and more inclusive and informed," it says.