Finding it a hassle to update your brand's Twitter and Facebook accounts every day? Soon you might not have to, as reports reveal Google is in the midst of patenting new social media software that suggests future posts users can post based on their previous status's and comments. Outsourcing never looked so easy.
Finding it a hassle to update your brand’s Twitter and Facebook accounts every day? Soon you might not have to, as reports reveal Google is in the midst of patenting new social media software that suggests future posts users can post based on their previous status’s and comments. Outsourcing never looked so easy.
Those enthusiastic about the futuristic software may have second-thoughts after learning that Google would need access to the user’s entire online presence, including emails and all social media accounts used, in order to be equipped with the knowledge to make realistic suggestions.
I don’t know about you, but the software seems reminiscent of a particular Black Mirror episode – the Channel 4 series created by Charlie Brooker – Be Right Back, which saw a woman bring her deceased boyfriend ‘back to life’ using a computer programme that studied his online presence and built a new robotic version of him, complete with inbuilt personality software that made him almost indistinguishable from his real self.
Unnerving. At least they aren’t building actual robots out of it, I suppose…
Nick Pickles, director of Big Brother Watch, told MailOnline: ‘Technology like this must only ever be opt-in, as it has the potential to allow companies like Google to harvest even more data from your private communications to enable automatic posting to sound authentic.
‘If you regularly send a text message about a certain type of medication or email a lawyer with words like ‘divorce’ appearing, the computer can quite easily identify you to a human searching through the data looking for certain things.
The patent explains: “There is no requirement for the user to set reminders or be proactive. The system automatically without user input analyzes information to which the user has access, and generates suggestions for personalized reactions to messages. The suggestion analyzer cooperates with the decision tree to learn the user’s behavior and automatically adjust the suggested messages that are generated over time.”
As Mashable reports, the patent was actually filed back in 2011, with a product yet to emerge.
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