An Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot that lets you interact with dead loved ones sounds like something straight out of science fiction. But if technology in a patent granted to Microsoft comes to fruition, interacting with a chatty 3D digital version of the deceased could one day become de rigueur.

The patent, titled 'Creating a conversational chatbot of a specific person," details a system that would access images, voice data, social media posts, electronic messages and the like to "create or modify a special index in the theme of the specific person's personality." In some cases, images and video could be used to create a 3D model of the person for extra realism.

It's an especially provocative notion when you consider the patent's suggestion that the tech "may correspond to a past or present entity."

You can read more in an article by Leslie Katz in the C|Net web site at: http://cnet.co/3iSbqEf.

It sounds a bit creepy to me! Then again, if someone could set up a chatbot of my great-great-grandfather, I have a few questions I'd like to ask him!