14 DAY TRIAL // The Internet has proven to be quite a rude place several times, and Microsoft’s Tay chatbot for Twitter launched yesterday knows it very well.
The artificial intelligence-based bot was designed in a way that allowed it to get smarter as more people interacted with it, thus learning new things and expanding its portfolio of answers that could be used in conversations with users on Twitter.
The only problem is that Tay has been involved in conversations that in the end have proven to cause more harm than good, making the chat bot not only very rude but also racist.
At the time of writing this article, Tay is offline, as Microsoft has decided to pull the plug on the chatbot and continue the work behind closed doors. The company hasn’t provided a reason for its decision to remove it, but it’s very clear that the racist attitude that it embraced in less than a day is at fault.
Hitler jokes and anti-Jew remarks
In case you’re wondering how come it became racist, it’s really easy. Tay learned new things from the users it interacted with, and it ended up by praising Hitler and saying nasty things about Jews. We can’t actually provide you with an example, not only because Tay used words that are clearly not a good idea reproducing, but also because Microsoft has been hard at work in the last few hours removing all the tweets that its chat bot posted.
What’s even worse is that Microsoft developed Tay to specifically target “18 to 24 year olds in the United States,” so it’s specifically tweeting for a young audience.
“Tay is designed to engage and entertain people where they connect with each other online through casual and playful conversation. The more you chat with Tay the smarter she gets, so the experience can be more personalized for you,” Microsoft says.
At this point, tweeting to @TayAndYou returns no answer, and a notification posted on the official website reads, “Phew. Busy day. Going offline for a while to absorb it all. Chat soon.” Without a doubt, Tay will be back soon with plenty of filters to make sure it doesn’t become a hater once again.