Patents aren't a claim on the idea itself, but on a specific implementation. There are many, many ways that sci-fi has conceived of this working. Any patent h

Patents aren't a claim on the idea itself, but on a specific implementation. There are many, many ways that sci-fi has conceived of this working. Any patent has to articulate a method for achieving it, and the patent only covers that particular method. That said, if a sci-fi novel were to go into great technical detail about how to train a chatbot to emulate the way a dead loved one communicates, and Microsoft were to copy that method exactly, it's possible that the novel could be treated as prior art.