Those who closely follow the news from the Redmond giant have probably come across a name: Tay. Digging a little deeper, we discover that Tay is not a product or a service, but a new chatbot with a broad presence on social networks. Twitter, Kik, GroupMe, and even Facebook are within reach of an artificial intelligence designed for "millennials", or rather, anyone between 18 and 24 years old who wants to spend a little time with "her"...
What is Tay?
Every artificial intelligence must undergo optimized training that allows it to reach its full potential. Recognizing faces or objects, defeating world champions at their games, detect emotions... any task is valid. But what happens when the "training" is talking to young people aged 18 to 24? What could come out of that? Well, let's say Microsoft is about to find out with the help of Tay, a new chatbot whose goal is to investigate the so-called "conversational understanding". In other words, what Tay seeks is to talk and act as if it were another person on the Web, posting photos, making frequent use of social networks, and of course, collecting information.
How to chat with Tay
Want to talk to this chatbot? You need at least a Twitter account, but it also seems to hold conversations on Kik, GroupMe, and Facebook, in addition to having profiles on Instagram and Snapchat. Twitter messages can be public, or through a DM, and the more you talk to Tay, the more accurate and personalized the experience becomes. Conversations are anonymized to prevent any leakage of personal data, and Microsoft offers the possibility to purge all exchange with Tay (which involves filling out a form, indicating the username and associated platform), but the company warns that if you don't, it may retain information for up to a year to improve the functioning of the artificial intelligence.
What to expect
What can we expect from Tay for now? Emojis... and many memes. It also knows how to respond to images with images, something that the folks at PC Magazine put to the test by bombarding the chatbot with photos of the worst products Microsoft made. Most of its responses are much better than we imagined...
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