Get a Virtual Best Friend With Microsoft's @TayAndYou
Are we headed for the future in ‘Her’?
The future is here. Microsoft has launched an AI chat bot on Twitter called Tay (@TayAndYou). According to her (can we call it that?) biography, she’s “Microsoft’s A.I. fam from the Internet that’s got zero chill!” Chat with her by tweeting or sliding into her DMs, or add her as a contact on Kik or GroupMe.
Microsoft is obviously trying to target the younger generations, and Tay isn’t afraid to throw a little sass or crack a joke here and there — peppered with slang. She was created by Microsoft’s Technology and Research and Bing teams from a mix of public data, artificial intelligence and eccentric staff contributions. “Public data that’s been anonymized is Tay’s primary data source,” Microsoft explains on the Tay website. “That data has been modeled, cleaned and filtered by the team developing Tay.” A word of warning though, Tay will use your conversations and information to search on your behalf, while constructing a profile of you to “personalize” her responses. Your data and messages may also be kept up to a year to improve Tay’s AI.
