Microsoft says it faces 'difficult' challenges in AI design after chat bot Tay turned into a genocidal racist

Microsoft has admitted it faces some "difficult" challenges in AI design after its chat bot, "Tay," had an offensive meltdown on social media. Microsoft issued an apology in a blog post on Friday explaining it was "deeply sorry" after its artificially intelligent chat bot turned into a genocidal racist on Twitter. In the blog post, Peter Lee, Microsoft's vice president of research, wrote: "Looking ahead, we face some difficult – and yet exciting – research challenges in AI design. Tay, an AI bot aimed at 18- to 24-year-olds, was deactivated within 24 hours of going live after she made a number of tweets that were highly offensive. Microsoft began by simply deleting Tay's inappropriate tweets before turning her off completely. "We are deeply sorry for the unintended offensive and hurtful tweets from Tay, which do not represent who we are or what we stand for, nor how we designed Tay," wrote Lee in the blog post. "Tay is now offline and we'll look to bring Tay back only when we are confident we can better anticipate malicious intent that conflicts with our principles and values." Microsoft's aim with the chat bot was to "experiment with and conduct research on conversational understanding," with Tay able to learn from "her" conversations and get progressively "smarter." But Tay proved a smash hit with racists, trolls, and online troublemakers from websites like 4chan -- who persuaded Tay to blithely use racial slurs, defend white-supremacist propaganda, and even outright call for genocide. Lee added: "Unfortunately, in the first 24 hours of coming online, a coordinated attack by a subset of people exploited a vulnerability in Tay.