Microsoft demos robot that can chat on the phone with humans

Microsoft unveiled its chatbot Xiaoice -- which translates to "little Bing" -- Wednesday on the heels of Google's controversial rollout of a similar tool earlier this month. Microsoft has already tested the talkative robot in China, where it's earned 500 million users and some level of fame. "Xiaoice has her own TV show, it writes poetry, and it does many interesting things," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at the demo first reported by The Verge. The demo included a phone call between a user and the bot, in Mandarin. The flow sounded natural thanks to Xiaoice's human-like interruptions, made possible due to predictive listening, Microsoft explained in a recent blog post.