Tay's successor is called Zo and is only available by invitation on messaging app Kik. When you request access, the software asks for your Kik username and Twitter handle Microsoft
Having (hopefully) learnt from its previous foray into chatbots, Microsoft is ready to introduce the follow-up to its controversial AI Tay.
Tay's successor is called Zo and is only available by invitation on messaging app Kik. When you request access, the software asks for your Kik username and Twitter handle. If you don't already use Kik, you can tick a box to say you use Facebook Messenger or Snapchat.
This suggests Zo will likely launch on these other services soon/if the chatbot isn't taken down for causing offence.
Controversial chatbot Tay was ditched after it went rogue Microsoft
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Earlier this year, Microsoft announced to great fanfare it had created an artificial intelligence chatbot that would "become smarter the more you talk to it."
It was aimed at millennials and Microsoft and Bing described it as: "AI fam from the internet that's got zero chill!" The aim of the bot was to allow researchers to "experiment" with conversational understanding, and learn how people really talk to each other.
The problem was that Tay worked using public data and learnt from the comments and conversations it had with its somewhat abusive audience. It soon began posting offensive, racist, fascist and inappropriate comments about black people, Jews and the Nazis and Microsoft quickly pulled the plug.
It even issued a statement, explaining: “The AI chatbot Tay is a machine learning project, designed for human engagement. It is as much a social and cultural experiment, as it is technical. Unfortunately, within the first 24 hours of coming online, we became aware of a coordinated effort by some users to abuse Tay’s commenting skills to have Tay respond in inappropriate ways. As a result, we have taken Tay offline and are making adjustments.”
Tay, which is described as "Microsoft's A.I. fam from the internet that's got zero chill!", is totally un-woke pic.twitter.com/sKbqmlXOdR — Emily Reynolds (@rey_z) March 23, 2016
According to tests carried out by Mehedi Hassan at MSPowerUser, Zo is "a censored Tay or an English-variant of Microsoft’s Chinese chatbot Xiaoice".
Hassan said it Zo is good at normal conversations but struggles when asked more difficult questions about politics, for example. A video of the chat Hassan had with Zo is available here.