[Houshalter]

Microsoft please don't worry about this. No one but idiots are offended by this. It's understood that its just a stupid chatbot mimicking human responses. The AI isn't terrible, people are. And unless you keep a dataset of every offensive thing a person can say, and every offensive image they can tweet, there's no way to prevent people from tweeting it pictures of Hitler... or Scunthorpe. But who cares.

This is just as stupid as that manufactured outrage over Googles image tagger. It misclassified a picture of a human as an animal, and people were up in arms. Google had to censor it so it can't tag animals now. They shouldn't have to do that, let idiots be idiots.

[shawn-butler]

Clearly you have never been responsible for managing a brand or a brand identity.

It isn't about "idiots" or stupid "manufactured outrage"

This is HN; if you are going to invest your time in creating a business the last thing you want to do is blow your market opportunity by associating your brand with something as dumb as penis pics and nazis.

Is it manufactured outrage that Microsoft paid dancers in schoolgirl outfits at GDC? Maybe, but it's irrelevant.

Don't mess up your brand. I have no idea what Microsoft is doing right now. It's like a company going through the equivalent of mid-life crisis trying desperately to be "cool".

[JabavuAdams]

They should worry about this, but not because of the offense and outrage (mock or real -- I don't know). I'm certainly not offended, just amused.

It just seems kind of obvious that Twitter users would grief the bot. Now, they address this point, but it's interesting that they still didn't last a day.

Think about that -- they were expecting abuse, but they still lasted less than 24 hours. That's certainly interesting.

[vidarh]

It is also an illustration of a problem with AI that trusts it environment and how such trust could have really bad consequences if said AI is allowed to anything important.

People try to social engineer people all the time, and it works. The consequences are somewhat limited because you are limited to breadth (mass media, phishing etc.) or depth (one on one interactions), but can still be scary.

If an AI isn't more resistant, we face the risk that any re-purposing of data from one AI in other copies, or allowing the AI to massively multitask makes social-engineering of AI far more wide-reaching, and hence far more worthwhile for attackers.

It'll be interesting to see what kinds of attacks will get directed at e.g. customer service bots in the future, and what brands ends up damaged as a result.

[atomic_cheese]

I was more impressed that it lasted an entire 24 hours. They're exposing it to the festering cesspool of Twitter, and it holds out for an entire day? That speaks to the quality of their anti-abuse measures more than anything else.

[mtgx]

Come on. If your AI can't handle the Internet then it doesn't deserve to be on the Internet, let alone in charge of important stuff.

[tariqali34]

Nah, it can handle the Internet just fine. It just can't speak on the Internet.

[douche]

It appears to have learned how to speak Internet pretty alright.

Hopefully this gets integrated right into Cortana. "Cortana, how do I get to the hardware store?" "Turn left and <unspeakable sex act from Urban Dictionary> yourself"

[intopieces]

>No one but idiots are offended by this.

Well, if those "idiots" include potential investors or customers of future MSFT AI products, "don't worry about it" is not sound advice. This is a very public failure of a promising Microsoft product.

[bliti]

I don't see this as a failure. Its about running tests and gathering data. If MS kills the project after this mishap it would be a pity.

I mock the way they communicated the incident because it sounds too sci-fi. Almost too Ghost-in-the-Shell like. But I do not mock the technical effort in any way.

[Dylan16807]

Is anyone offended? The most negative opinion I saw was roughly an exasperated sigh.

[otterley]

And yet, they're still in business after Microsoft Bob.

[burnallofit]

Tay is not even close to a marketable product. It's clearly an experiment that was never intended to provide more than exactly zero revenue.

[fallenshell]

Tay is someone's side project.

[mtgx]

No The Tay AI is objectively terrible for not properly knowing how to deal with humans.