Get to know Chatbots: Computers that Talk to Humans

Ever imagined talking to AI, aka Artificial Intelligence? Perhaps most of us have never imagined it. But chatbots will soon change most people’s view of the possibility of talking to AI, or our own computers.

What are Chatbots?

For information, chatbots are actually not a new toy. This name refers to a computer program that is basically designed to simulate a conversation between a computer and one or more humans, both in text and audio.

The chatbot was developed as a Turing Test, in which the computer program’s true identity as a machine is kept secret. And this aims to trick people who are conversing with the machine. If a human cannot identify the program as a machine, then the chatbot is classified as artificial intelligence (AI).

Be chatbot initially full of specific criteria: that a computer program must be able to imitate human abilities in terms of conversing with other humans. And those who judge these abilities are humans too. In a broader scope, chatbots have been used for various practical purposes such as information acquisition, personal service, and online assistance.

One type of chatbot developed by Microsoft is Tay. First released on Twitter, in 2021, Tay sparked controversy when the bot started posting offensive tweets and offending others through his account. That’s why Microsoft then decided to turn off the Tay just 16 hours after it was first released on March 23 of the same year.

According to Microsoft, at that time Tay was turned off because the bot was replying to tweets based on his interactions with people on Twitter. So, the closure of Tay was caused by harsh words that “attacked” the services provided by Tay. It’s just that Tay’s history doesn’t stop there.

Tay was actually born thanks to a partnership between the Bing division (search engine) and Microsoft’s Technology and Research division. Tay is an acronym for “thinking about you”, which is basically similar to another Microsoft project in China called Xiaoice. Initially Tay was designed to emulate the language patterns of a 19-year-old American woman and later developed into an entity capable of learning to interact with human users on Twitter.

Chatbot service launched in Several Countries

Based on information compiled from Computer Info, the Tay service has now been released in several countries. Starting from China three years ago, Tay was then released in three countries, namely India, the US, and Japan. It is said that Tay will be released more widely, namely in countries with 100 million people.

Here we should look at Microsoft’s ambition to be at the forefront of artificial intelligence development. Tay brought the basic idea, that everyone should be able to talk to a computer, and vice versa. We really see Microsoft’s big ambition to make Tay as Microsoft’s spearhead in developing artificial intelligence.

According to records from several sources of information, Tay basically works by combining EQ and IQ, and in turn makes a machine not only “intelligent” but also able to connect him emotionally with the interlocutor.

Although it looks promising, because it has been and will be released to several countries with large populations, Microsoft admits that they still need time to develop AI.

So in the future we are likely to see more developments related to Tay, and in particular related to the development of artificial intelligence. Are you ready to talk to the computer that you may use every day for some purpose?