Why Chatbots Sometimes Act Weird and Spout Nonsense

The Bing chatbot is powered by a kind of artificial intelligence called a neural network. That may sound like a computerized brain, but the term is misleading. A neural network is just a mathematical system that learns skills by analyzing vast amounts of digital data. As a neural network examines thousands of cat photos, for instance, it can learn to recognize a cat. Most people use neural networks every day. It's the technology that identifies people, pets and other objects in images posted to internet services like Google Photos.