Facebook uses 1.5bn Reddit posts to create chatbot

Facebook has launched a new chatbot that it claims is able to demonstrate empathy, knowledge and personality. "Blender" was trained using available public domain conversations which included 1.5 billion examples of human exchanges. The social media giant said 49% of people preferred interactions with the chatbot, compared with another human. But experts say training the artificial intelligence (AI) using a platform such as Reddit has its drawbacks. Numerous issues arose during longer conversations.