[pervycreeper]

The response that Microsoft gave was really the worst of both worlds, combining the systematic corporate shirking of responsibility which enables and gives cover to a great deal of evil, with a complete accedence to and embracing of political correctness. Furthermore, their claim that they did not anticipate "this specific attack" is either a lie, or their creators made an extremely obvious mistake (yes, easy to say in hindsight, but it's really hard to believe that this possibility would not occur to competent implementers).

[maxerickson]

What would they need to do to properly take responsibility?

They turned it off pretty fast and agree that it was a mistake, what's the problem beyond that?

[bliti]

But given all the Internet drama in the past years its the latest standard corporate approach to similar. Admit fault, apologize, and suck up to the supposedly offended. Its a product of the same environment the corporations have nurtured (people won't buy our stuff if we offend them so let's treat them all like special snowflakes).

Could they have anticipated how people would turn the bot into that? Probably. Who says this is not some data they wanted to acquire? I'd happily go through the technical gains with their team any day. Having all this real world input and seeing how the program reacted is such a goldmine of information.

Edit: I did not downvote you. Your point is valid.

[greyman]

IMHO the response from Microsoft was fine. They admitted the mistake and taken the bot offline. What else should they do? What I find strange is that nobody criticizes twitter for not doing anything... I think Facebook would deal better with this.