Items tagged with chatbot
The true measure of a chatbot is not simply its ability to offer responses to questions, or even to just to make sense when 'conversing' with a human. Instead, it is the ability to allow a flesh and blood person to suspend disbelief and feel as though they are chatting with an actual intelligent being (and do it without being offensive, which is challenging, as Microsoft discovered). Google claims its new Meena chatbot is better at this than another other "conversational agent." Calling Meena a chatbot is selling it short. It is an end-to-end, neural conversational model that learns to respond with replies that make actual sense, given whatever context is at hand. Google says Meena consists of...
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Microsoft Tay was a well-intentioned entry into the burgeoning field of AI chatbots. However, Tay ended up being a product of its environment, transforming seemingly overnight into a racist, hate-filled and sex-crazed chatbot that caused an embarrassing PR nightmare for Microsoft. The AI wunderkinds in Redmond, Washington hoped to right the wrongs of Tay with its new Zo chatbot, and for a time, it appeared that it was successfully avoiding parroting the offensive speech of its deceased sibling. However, as one publication has discovered, the seeds of hate run deep when it comes to Microsoft’s AI. According to BuzzFeed, Microsoft programmed Zo to avoid delving into topics that could be potential...
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Microsoft has been investing in artificial intelligence for over two decades now. Those investments have led to technologies such as Cortana, the digital assistant that helps navigate Windows, and Microsoft Translator, which uses the company's new intelligent language and speech recognition capability to translate between groups speaking in multiple languages in-person and in real-time. It's also led to Zo, Microsoft's new social chatbot. Zo uses conversational AI, which Microsoft says is comprised of two distinct sides—the task-completion side or productivity side and the emotional side. From Microsoft's vantage point, both are needed to truly tap into the full potential of AI. The latter is...
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It looks as though Microsoft is looking to delve back in to the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot scene with a follow-up to the ill-fated Tay. After some rather raucous behavior that eventually earned Tay a permanent stint in rehab, Zo is emerging as its true successor. Zo is the latest generation of Microsoft’s AI chatbot, and it is currently available in preview form for those that use the Kik messenger platform. Kik isn’t are popular as Facebook Messenger and Snapchat, and it definitely isn’t as pervasive as Twitter (which allowed Tay to become a hate-filled PR nightmare for Microsoft). Perhaps Kik’s smaller audience (240 million users versus over a billion for a service like Facebook Messenger)...
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If you've ever tried contesting a parking ticket or some other traffic citation, you might have come away from the experience thinking the system is rigged and it's futile to argue your case. That's not actually true—you just have to know how to play the game, and if you live in the U.K. or New York, there's a chatbot that can help. Called DoNotPay, the chatbot is the creation of Joshua Browder, a 19-year-old who taught himself to code when he was just 12 years old. He was motivated to create DoNotPay by having racked up over two dozen parking tickets shortly after receiving his driver's license. He considers DoNotPay "the world's first robot lawyer" and true to form, it's helped motorists beat...
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When it comes to the burgeoning arena of conversational intelligence, Microsoft could use a helping hand. That help is coming in the form of an acquisition of messaging app developer Wand Labs. Following Microsoft’s $26 billion purchase of LinkedIn on Monday, this marks Microsoft’s second major acquisition (this one at an undisclosed price) this week. “Wand Labs’ technology and talent will strengthen our position in the emerging era of conversational intelligence, where we bring together the power of human language with advanced machine intelligence,” said Microsoft’s David Ku. “It builds on and extends the power of the Bing, Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and Windows platforms to empower developers...
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Microsoft’s Tay chatbot made quite the splash last week when it was set loose on an unsuspecting Twitter audience, only to have her AI brain filled with bouts of racism, Nazi sympathizing, and a penchant for propositioning her followers for kinky sex. Microsoft took Tay offline roughly a day after her debut, and followed up with an apology for her vile behavior. Well, Tay came back online this morning around 3:00am EST and while she didn’t proclaim her love for Donald Trump or Adolf Hitler — as she did previously — she instead went on a spamming spree after an apparent “mental breakdown.” Not long after her return, Tay entered into some sort of loop in which she repeatedly retweeted herself,...
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Microsoft shocked us all earlier this week when it released its Tay chatbot into the world of social media. Tay, which is patterned after a typical millennial female between the age of 18 and 24, seemed innocent enough, signing on to Twitter with the following greeting:hellooooooo w🌎rld!!!— TayTweets (@TayandYou) March 23, 2016 However, it didn’t take long for nefarious Twitter users to poison the well by exploiting Tay’s penchant for repeating statements fed to it. This “parrot” mentality is the reason why Tay went off message, calling President Barack Obama a monkey, embracing neo-Nazi rhetoric, and coming on to users with the promise of cyber sex. Microsoft of course was both mortified and...
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And this is why we can’t have nice things! Microsoft's Technology and Research Division along with Bing developed Tay as an exercise in testing its advancements in artificial intelligence. In the case of Tay, it’s a “female” chatbot that is targeted at millennials ranging in age from 18 to 24. “Tay is designed to engage and entertain people where they connect with each other online through casual and playful conversation,” writes Microsoft. “The more you chat with Tay the smarter she gets, so the experience can be more personalized for you.” Microsoft unleashed Tay onto the world this week via “her” own Twitter account, and the Twitterverse quickly embraced the chatbot. What Microsoft didn’t...
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