Microsoft to tighten screw after chatbot's loose talk

Microsoft's chatbot on Twitter, Tay was an experiment at humans influencing the communication skills and developing AI's responses as a real millennial teenager. So no surprise then that it went horribly wrong extremely fast. As the bot sent out racist tweets and conspiracy theories — even denying the Holocaust — within 24 hours of going online, the company apologised for the "reprehensible" tweets and promised to keep the bot offline until it is better prepared to counter malicious efforts to corrupt the artificial intelligence.

In a blog entry, Microsoft Research head Peter Lee expressed regret for the conduct of its AI chatbot and explained what went wrong.

"We are deeply sorry for the unintended offensive and hurtful tweets from Tay, which do not represent who we are or what we stand for, nor how we designed Tay," Lee writes.

As things went awry, Microsoft was forced to delete her racist tweets and suspend the experiment.

"Tay is now offline and we'll look to bring Tay back only when we are confident we can better anticipate malicious intent that conflicts with our principles and values," Lee writes.

An organised effort of trolls on Twitter quickly taught Tay a slew of racial and xenophobic slurs. Within 24 hours, Tay was professing her admiration for Hitler, proclaiming how much she hated Jews and Mexicans, and using the n-word quite a bit.

In the blog entry, Lee explains that Microsoft's Tay team was trying to replicate the success of its Xiaoice chatbot, which is a smash hit in China, for an American audience. Given that they never had this kind of problem with Xiaoice, Lee says, they didn't anticipate this attack on Tay.

"Although we had prepared for many types of abuses of the system, we had made a critical oversight for this specific attack. As a result, Tay tweeted wildly inappropriate and reprehensible words and images," Lee writes.

Ultimately, Lee says, this is a part of the process of improving AI, and Microsoft is working on making sure Tay can't be abused the same way again. Still, it raises a lot of questions about the future: If Tay is supposed to learn from us, what does it say that she was so easily and quickly "tricked" into racism?


Also read: Microsoft forced to withdraw a chatbot after tweets made it racist