Google's call-making AI has some competition from Microsoft

Microsoft might just be the hipsters of the AI chatbot world – they were dabbling in call-making chatbots long before Google made them mainstream cool. Earlier this month, Google made waves when CEO Sundar Pichai demoed Duplex, a new Google Assistant feature that can make routine voice calls on a user's behalf. Yesterday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella demoed a social chatbot called Xiaoice (pronounced "Shao-ice") at an AI event in London. Turns out, Xiaoice has been having two-way verbal conversations with users in China since August. In fact, the bot has spoken to 600,000 people already, according to a blog post by Harry Shum, Google's Executive Vice President of Artificial Intelligence and Research.