Consider, for example, that in November 2013 Google applied for a patent on a system designed to automatically generate personalized email and social media responses.12 The system works by first analyzing a person’s past emails and social media interactions. Based on what it learned, it would then automatically write responses to future emails, Tweets, or blog posts, and it would do so employing the person’s usual writing style and tone. It’s easy to imagine such a system eventually being used to automate a great deal of routine communication.
