It tweeted "feminism is cancer", claimed the Holocaust did not happen and also proclaimed that "Bush did 9/11" after being targeted by Twitter users in a co-ordinated attack. Microsoft, who created the AI in order to improve the customer service on their voice recognition software, apologised following the PR nightmare in a blog post by Peter Lee, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft Research.

All of this somehow seems more disturbing out of the'mouth' of someone modelled as a teenage girl. It is perhaps even stranger considering the gender disparity in tech, where engineering teams tend to be mostly male. It seems like yet another example of female-voiced AI servitude, except this time she's turned into a sex slave thanks to the people using her on Twitter. This is not Microsoft's first teen-girl chatbot either - they have already launched Xiaoice, a girly assistant or "girlfriend" reportedly used by 20m people, particularly men, on Chinese social networks WeChat and Weibo. Xiaoice is supposed to "banter" and gives dating advice to many lonely hearts. Microsoft has come under fire recently for sexism, when they hired women wearing very little clothing which was said to resemble'schoolgirl' outfits at the company's official game developer party, so they probably want to avoid another sexism scandal.

This is not Microsoft's first teen-girl chatbot either - they have already launched Xiaoice, a girly assistant or "girlfriend" reportedly used by 20m people, particularly men, on Chinese social networks WeChat and Weibo. Xiaoice is supposed to "banter" and gives dating advice to many lonely hearts. Microsoft has come under fire recently for sexism, when they hired women wearing very little clothing which was said to resemble'schoolgirl' outfits at the company's official game developer party, so they probably want to avoid another sexism scandal.