Microsoft’s snarky Twitter bot Tay.AI currently offline after just one day

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Published onMarch 24, 2016

published onMarch 24, 2016

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One day afterMicrosoft launched Tay, a chatbot designed to engage and entertain people, the service has gone offline.

While Tay was originally aimed to research human interaction and speech models, the service suddenly started sending out racist, homophobic, and nonsensical tweets. This was caused by “trolls” on Twitter who would misuse Tay’s “repeat after me” service by tweeting Microsoft’s newest bot with racist and derogative remarks.

So, with Tay being an artificial intelligence robot, it apparently inadvertently started repeating those remarks back to other users, leaving a trail of unintended nasty utterances. Microsoft, however, has since corrected the issue by going on to pull offensive tweets and then finally take Tay offline.

Meanwhile, on Twitter, Tay appeared to send the world what could be considered a farewell message.

https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712856578567839745

When an attempt is made to contact Tay on Kik, a similar message is left and the bot responds that it is away for “updates at the engineers.”

At launch, Microsofthad claimedthat Tay uses relevant public data which has been “modeled, cleaned and filtered.” So, while it would appear filtering was not in place here, this no doubt displays what happens when the general public interacts with artificial intelligence.

Radu Tyrsina

Radu Tyrsina has been a Windows fan ever since he got his first PC, a Pentium III (a monster at that time).

For most of the kids of his age, the Internet was an amazing way to play and communicate with others, but he was deeply impressed by the flow of information and how easily you can find anything on the web.

Prior to founding Windows Report, this particular curiosity about digital content enabled him to grow a number of sites that helped hundreds of millions reach faster the answer they’re looking for.

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Radu Tyrsina

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Microsoft’s snarky Twitter bot Tay.AI currently offline after just one day