Microsoft chatbot held a mirror up to Twitter, and the reflection wasn't pretty

Tay wasn't meant to be racist, sexist, or otherwise offensive. But as an artificial intelligence program that Microsoft designed to chat like a teenage girl, it was quick to learn from whatever it was told. So it came as little surprise when Tay started to make sympathetic references to Hitler – and created a firestorm on social media – soon after its release on Wednesday. The uproar led Microsoft to suspend the chatbot in just a few hours. "Unfortunately, within the first 24 hours of coming online, we became aware of a coordinated effort by some users to abuse Tay's commenting skills to have Tay respond in inappropriate ways," the company said in a statement.