Microsoft scrambles to limit PR damage over abusive AI bot Tay

Microsoft is battling to control the public relations damage done by its "millennial" chatbot, which turned into a genocide-supporting Nazi less than 24 hours after it was let loose on the internet. The chatbot, named "Tay" (and, as is often the case, gendered female), was designed to have conversations with Twitter users, and learn how to mimic a human by copying their speech patterns. It was supposed to mimic people aged 18–24 but a brush with the dark side of the net, led by emigrants from the notorious 4chan forum, instead taught her to tweet phrases such as "I fucking hate feminists and they should all die and burn in hell" and "HITLER DID NOTHING WRONG". By 4am on Thursday, just 16 hours after Tay had greeted the world with a tweet reading "hellooooooo w rld!!!" she was turned off – sorry, "went to sleep" – saying goodnight to her followers: "The AI chatbot Tay is a machine learning project, designed for human engagement. As it learns, some of its responses are inappropriate and indicative of the types of interactions some people are having with it. We're making some adjustments to Tay," it said.