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I remember reading about a startup that already did that. If I recall correctly, it developed organically out of a situation where the founder had actually lost a friend and trained a chat-bot on their email backlog.

Later she realized that there might be a business idea in this.

Does anyone recall that article?

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Sounds a bit like this article: https://www.theverge.com/a/luka-artificial-intelligence-memo...

haven't had the time to read all of it again and can't recall all of it, so might not be the one.

I don't remember the exact details either but I believe this is it. Thanks for digging it up.

Now, wouldn't that constitute prior art wrt. the patent application?

Yeah, the origin story described sounds like Replika's.

In case Verge's story isn't the right one, here is another from Quartz that might be the coverage you remember:

https://classic.qz.com/machines-with-brains/1018126/lukas-re...

Was the friend also an employee? The tone of the sentence sounds quite different if you replace those words: from touching to dystopian

> situation where the founder had actually lost an employee and trained a chat-bot on their email backlog.

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