The 5 Fundamentals of Bot Deployment

The chatbots making headlines in recent years have become famous for one thing--failing. There was Coca-Cola's #MakeItHappy campaign, in which Gawker tricked the company's bot into tweeting lines from Hitler's Mein Kampf. Then came Tay, Microsoft's infamous AI-powered Twitter bot that learned to spew racist comments in less than 24 hours. Equally unforgettable was InspiroBot, which was designed to generate inspirational quotes for posters and ended up producing such memorable messages as, "Cats are going to fill the world with pain" and "Try to tell yourself that you are horrible." The technology behind conversational bots is still relatively new, and many companies have raced to innovate without necessarily thinking through possible flaws and loopholes.