Meta's New Patent: an AI That Likes, Comments and Messages For You When You're Dead (businessinsider.com) 89
Meta was granted a patent in late December that describes how a large language model could be trained on a deceased user's historical activity -- their comments, likes, and posted content -- to keep their social media accounts active after they're gone.
Andrew Bosworth, Meta's CTO, is listed as the primary author of the patent, first filed in 2023. The AI clone could like and comment on posts, respond to DMs, and even simulate video or audio calls on the user's behalf. A Meta spokesperson told Business Insider the company has "no plans to move forward" with the technology.
Andrew Bosworth, Meta's CTO, is listed as the primary author of the patent, first filed in 2023. The AI clone could like and comment on posts, respond to DMs, and even simulate video or audio calls on the user's behalf. A Meta spokesperson told Business Insider the company has "no plans to move forward" with the technology.
uh-oh (Score:5, Funny)
I guess we can conclude that Zuck has gone tits up and now we just get his Dead Bot.
Re: uh-oh (Score:5, Funny)
Re: uh-oh (Score:5, Funny)
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The scales would be less shiny.
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Empathy hallucinations?
Re: uh-oh (Score:2)
Soon someone will make a JFK bot.
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Funny FP branch, but I still think we need a better label for the idea. How about GAIvatar as a portmanteau from "Generative AI avatar"?
In the case of a JFK GAIvatar, it would be interesting to ask it whether or not it would have escalated in Vietnam.
The example I've used before would involve an Einstein GAIvatar. First you would train it on pre-1905 stuff, and then ask it about the topics of the four big papers. The training would be regarded as successful if the results were sufficiently similar to what E
Holy shit, that's autistic (Score:1)
Re:Holy shit, that's autistic (Score:4, Informative)
This is less about him being autistic and more about him being a sociopath.
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Note: I deleted my instagram several years ago, I'm no
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^^ This ^^
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Exactly, after your death you keep posting and oh look, you suddenly will endorse product X....
Salivating at selling ghosts to do testimonials for you...
Re: Holy shit, that's autistic (Score:2)
This is how they'll monetize influencers after they die. Imagine willing your social media rights to your kid or your spouse, and now they have this asset they can continue generating income from, or sell to someone else.
One more reason to hate this timeline.
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This is less about him being autistic and more about him being a sociopath.
Perhaps a little of both, but the reality is this is heading towards the solution to the owner class's largest problems at the current moment.
Birth rates are falling, and the economy is built on "forever growth." They've already figured out a way to make the digital realm profitable. Now they need to make sure that the digital realm forever grows. If they make sure that actual death in the physical realm doesn't mean less eyeballs in the digital realm, they can continue their forever growth by simply not ha
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Re: Holy shit, that's autistic (Score:3, Insightful)
Uhh... If my dead sister liked a post I don't think I would feel very good at all. Like never visit the site again level of revulsion.
Re: Holy shit, that's autistic (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a dead former coworker. His family has access to his account. Every so often, they browse fb on it and like a post. It feels icky and wtf every time. In fact the first time I had to go back through old DMs and emails to double check that he was actually dead and I wasn't misremembering, it was that fucked up. This would be the last thing I'd ever want, for my loved ones or myself.
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Yeah this is fucked up. If some bot starts posting as one of my dead friends (you start accumulating them as you get older, alas) honestly, I'm gonna lose my shit.
Resrurect me as a bot, and I swear I'll come back as a ghost and start haunting shitty tech bros.
whew (Score:2)
Good thing I don't have any social media accounts that need to keep going.
What would the world do without my comments?
How will my AI feel when I tell it that it is going to die with me?
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Based on previous experiments it'll try blackmailing you for more content.
But, you're dead. It has to try and bring you back long enough to get the content to serve its purpose. ...and that's how we get the zombie apocalypse.
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Got a cause, got a product, that could use a bump ... pay Meta to have the appropriate "person" like it, comments on it, etc.
I'm sure that having dead celebrities endorsing products and commenting on trends is a project already in the works. After all, pervasive and unavoidable advertising and endorsements seem to have been the ultimate goal of modern civilisation.
The interesting aspect will be the court cases and lawsuits around compensating the estates and families of deceased stars.
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I don't have any social media accounts that need to keep going.
It is okay to let go and let the next generations take over. Things change. Why be stuck in some never ending remix of your limited life?
Zombies (Score:3)
So fb will turn my account into zombie account. I hope my zombie avatar will not like or follow zucks posts or account.
Here's another idea for fb to present to their investors. For a small fee I can pay while alive, my zombie account would get the option to post some cute AI slop.
I've always said over my dead body ..
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So fb will turn my account into zombie account.
And you can bet they wont tell their investors how many "active users" are really still living people. Perhaps a acknowledgement that their user base is trending older and will begin dying off (or at least reach a point where they stop using a computer) in the near future.
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Mental note: Write the credentials in my will next to the note where I wish to have my accounts deleted.
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Going for gold (Score:3)
...in the olympics of stupid ideas
This one seems like a very strong contender, possibly the strongest yet
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It also seems to me that there is prior art. I'm sure I've gotten feedback from spammers pretending to be someone who was actually dead.
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Tons of prior art. I am pretty sure I've seen it on Black Mirror, but it's been suggested long before then. A quick search finds Hans Moravec writing about it in 1988. Since the restrictions on patents for prior art or for them being non-obvious to one skilled in the art have been watered down to the point of meaninglessness, that doesn't stop patent examiners from just rubber stamping garbage like this.
Defeats the whole purpose of patents (Score:4, Insightful)
Not surprising, but patents (in the US) really need to be a use it or lose it thing. They're not intended to prohibit inventions, but protect them temporarily from competition. You should lose them if you dont have a product in customer hands within a year of it being granted and if you stop making it available, the patent becomes forfeit. But i guess this is just one thing in a long list of patent reforms needed. Also, this is a stupid patent, but nevertheless, a gross misuse of patents.
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"Not surprising, but patents (in the US) really need to be a use it or lose it thing."
Why? The alleged benefit of a patent is a reward for teaching the industry your invention, why should you be required to conduct a business to be rewarded for the effort and expense you have already sacrificed?
"You should lose them if you dont have a product in customer hands within a year of it being granted and if you stop making it available, the patent becomes forfeit."
False, the benefit is that the industry receives
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The alleged benefit of a patent is a reward for teaching the industry your invention, why should you be required to conduct a business to be rewarded for the effort and expense you have already sacrificed?
Are you serious? Have you paid attention the the last several years? Even is that's what it was "for" it's obvious the system is broken and not working. I don't know the solution, but your take is just naive.
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Naive or not it's a fucked up cash grab when this type of stuff is obvious and has plenty of prior art. Shit I've personally thought about doing something like for fun before 2023. Shit maybe that should be a byline in a trust I'll found. Run an AI bot for me indefinitely. What are they gonna do about it?
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The system is broken, but requiring the patent holder to put a product on the market is not the fix, as it disincentivises running a pure research operation.
Right now, you can run a research organisation to develop and prototype a technology, then license it to manufacturers and get payback on the research over the next twenty years, and use that to fund development of more technology.
If you require the patent holder to put a product on the market themselves, you make life harder. It's only worthwhile to p
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I do know how the system works. The proposed solution doesn't help. Even if you just say that a product utilising the patent has to be marketed within a year, it stacks the system against people who aren't already in manufacturing and don't have the capital to enter the business. Why would anyone license the patent if they can just wait a year and get it for free? It turns it into a game of chicken, where unless the patent is completely revolutionary, the best thing to do is for manufacturers to wait ou
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Seems pretty logical to me. Except... (Score:2)
I can see a giant competitor using it against a startup, unless structured correctly.
Doing something like this AI hardware demand effect on other device's use of DRAM and NAND supply. Just pre-order a year's worth of production, and the patent becomes useful to them too (spend the year implementing it in your own products).
AI is now ruining death (Score:3)
It won't even let you rest in peace.
Like who is the market for this?
A trillion dollars... for whatever the fuck this is.
And what happens when you die but a week later they come out with a new frontier model, and then a week later the model you were written for has been shutdown because nobody is using it any more because it just wasn't as good as the DEAITH-39oB model and it also kept praising hitler for some reason.
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The market is anyone who can't let go. Imagine that your child dies in an accident, and someone tells you that you can keep talking to your child if you just pay up a hundred bucks a month. In the middle of your grief - could you easily say no?
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...nobody is using it any more because it just wasn't as good as the DEAITH-39oB model and it also kept praising hitler for some reason.
Wrong company. You're thinking about Twitt-X; TFA is about Meta.
BTW, thanks for the laugh - I damned near lost a mouthful of the root beer I'm drinking.
Prior art (Score:2)
Does Caprica count as prior art?
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Be interesting to see (Score:1)
How the UK arrests AI for peoples twitter posts after theyâ(TM)re dead.
Celebrities (Score:2)
Dead celebrities often have active social media accounts run by the staff of their estate, usually with the purpose of marketing their products. I can imagine how this sort of use of AI would add a little colour to the postings of these AI ghosts.
Hey, they could add a new status (like married/single) to indicate dead/alive.
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Hey, they could add a new status (like married/single) to indicate dead/alive.
Don't we already have enough special status info to keep track of now that "preferred pronouns" are a thing?
I'm reminded of a meme from four decades ago - "Nuke the gay baby whales for Jesus in Cambodia".
Meta Stock (Score:2)
Welcome to the dead internet theory (Score:2)
No! (Score:2)
My review (Score:4, Funny)
Extraordinary (Score:1)
Isn't it extraordinary that someone actually thought this was a good idea?
Now Let's Think About It (Score:2)
Don't we all need this?
Dead or alive, how much time could you save by having an AI do your socials?
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Dead or alive, how much time could you save by having an AI do your socials?
The dead have literally all the time in the world, so I suspect that saving time isn't high on their list of priorities.
That's a ... (Score:2)
... special waste of energy.
I do not wish people I know now to waste what precious life they have on artificial commentary from an account I once owned (not logged in for decade or more now).
I behaved differently in that account anyway due to the audience. That'd not represent me now anyhow.
Please, nobody should was energy on either side of this.
Will probably count it as an active account too (Score:2)
As Meta's user base "ages out", this seems more like a tactic to keep the "active user count" up. Don't let my death stop you from counting me as part of your subscriber numbers to investors.
They already generate friend requests (Score:2)
for the living, why not also extend this to dead people. And really, it keeps people on the platform, who wouldn't want their dead grandma to like their post?
Should be illegal. (Score:2)
Let's Take This to the Logical Conclusion (Score:3)
If only AI chatbots are conversing and posting to one another, who's actually going to see the ads, mmm? And who will pay for ads that aren't seen by human beings?
Nice (Score:2)
Can't wait to see lawsuits from widows being friended by their dead husbands on FB.
I see dead people all the time (Score:2)
...on Facebook.
Publicity rights (Score:2)
Maybe I should start running my own pet robot Zuckerberg. He'd totally not mind at all, right?
You can patent stuff this obvious? (Score:3)
That just shows the patent system is utterly broken.
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How would you know? Have you seen the patent? Or are you going on the nonexistent information in this "article"?
You cannot judge obviousness of something when you have no idea what is even claimed. Don't let that stop you from your ignorant categorical statements, though.
Finally (Score:3)
A product for the only time I'd be willing to use Facebook.
Zuckerberg Unlimited (Score:3)
The age we live in (Score:2)
It says something about the age we live in that we're only mildly surprised to read a headline like
Meta's New Patent: an AI That Likes, Comments and Messages For You When You're Dead
It means that we immediately know what Meta, Patent, AI, social media (Likes, Comments and Messages) and dead mean.
Oh boy...
Sweet, Flamebait Forever (Score:2)
Sweet, now I can have Flamebait comments posted *forever*.
A Patently large problem. (Score:2)
A Meta spokesperson told Business Insider the company has "no plans to move forward" with the technology.
Really? Mind telling me what the fuck else you’re gonna do with the planets largest digital graveyard? You enjoy filing patents for funsies?
Looks like I’ll be chatting with my great-great-great Grandpa soon. About his Viagra needs. Hey, why not? He’s only 144 years young.
Prior art (Score:1)
FB I'm Dead Message (Score:3)
I have a little script that checks to see if I have logged into my PC lately. If not, it posts a message for my FB friends:
"Well looks like I'm finally dead. First thing here is that I had to attend a seminar for the newly dead that explained the rules. The most important rule, they said, is that we are not supposed to interact with the living in any way shape or form. The folks in charge are pretty serious about this. The penalties for violating are pretty steep. But I have found a bug in the system that appears to let me communicate with y'all without their knowledge. This is kind of a strange place. The most interesting thing is a (*&@$)(*&^$)*&%KUJJBHJKBMNC No Carrier"
Patent? (Score:1)
Its time to end the stigma (Score:2)
Lister: "Look, Rimmer, death isn't the handicap it used to be in the olden days. It doesn't screw your career up like it used to."
Rimmer: "That's what they say, Lister. But if you had two people coming for a job, and one of them was dead, which one would you pick?"
The United Appeal for the Dead will be interested in this. [youtu.be]
That is *literally* the worst thing I can think of (Score:1)
Like, do I really want my dead father posting? How is that going to make me feel? The people who thought this up are heartless bastards.I hope their parents all die and they have to watch their stupid-ass AI post shit. What the fuck you fucking morons.
Do not want (Score:3)
The fact that more than one person was likely involved in thinking this was a good idea, is quite disturbing.
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All babies are narcissistic. Many folks grow out of that. This product is for the people who didn't.
Wow (Score:2)
So much for Kuhn's paradigm shift... (Score:2)
So much for Kuhn's paradigm shift...now the dead advocate of an obsolete paradigm or methodology will continue on, but that's progress, moving forward one step backward, at a time. Perhaps "paradigm entrenchment" is the new, new thing?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
--JoshK.
Hey look, it's caprica (Score:2)
But not even close to good enough to do it well
Oh yeah ? (Score:2)
No, really, now you can.
Don't these need to be "non-obvious"? (Score:2)
I thought "use technology A in situation B" weren't allowed to be patented or protected. Like turning existing good solutions into "software on a computer" and patenting it again.
Tool that's designed to mimick trained data set, is aimed at mimicking a person. Seems pretty obvious. This is just s special case of that.