Google has patented plans for software that is able to mimic the responses and actions of users on social media.

In a bid to help people cope with the demands of social media, the search engine giant has designed a system that will collect information and "learn" the typical reactions of individual users to status updates and interactions with connections in their networks.

The 'Automated generation of suggestions for personalized reactions in a social network' software was designed by Google software engineer Ashish Bhatia in the hope that one day it will be capable of generating responses indistinguishable from those of the actual user.

"The popularity and use of social networks and other types of electronic communication has grown dramatically in recent years," he wrote in the patent. "With the increased use and popularity of social networks, the value of these networks has increased exponentially. However, this also means that the number of messages and information each user must process has increased exponentially.

"It is often difficult for users to keep up with and reply to all the messages they are receiving. Therefore, it is important for user to keep to most critical message based on their interests and more importantly, based on how other users reacted to that message."

If the concept proves successful, then in the future many of our interactions online could be dealt with by this form of artificial intelligence. This could potentially lead to the bizarre situation of such software communicating with itself on behalf of the users.

How popular an idea that will bring us ever closer to the technological singularity, however, is still some way from being tested on a large scale. More development is needed before such software could legitimately pass for an actual human if the examples in the patent are anything to go by.

In response to a friend getting a new job, the suggested response was: "Hey David, I am fine, You were in ABC corp for 3 years and you recently moved to XYZ corp, how do you feel about the difference, enjoying your new workplace?"