Microsoft's AI bot wants to chat with all you young adults

OREANDA-NEWS. March 24, 2016. Tay was built by the Microsoft Technology and Research and Bing teams as a way to conduct research on conversational understanding. The Bing team developed a similar conversational bot, XiaoIce, for the Chinese market, back in 2014. Microsoft execs dubbed XiaoIce "Cortana's little sister," after the Redmond, Washington, company's voice-activated Cortana personal assistant software.

According to Tay's About page, the chat bot was built "by mining relevant public data and by using AI and editorial developed by a staff including improvisational comedians." Anonymized public data is Tay's primary data source, the page says.

The bot is targeted specifically at the 18-to-24 age group because that cohort represents "the dominant users of mobile social chat services in the US," the About page says.

If a user wants to "share" with Tay, the bot tracks that user's nickname, gender, favorite food, zip code and relationship status. Users can delete their profiles by submitting a request via the Tay.ai contact form.