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What are the biggest failures of "chat bot" type of applications?
Apart from Facebook M, the biggest failures of "chat bot" type of applications include Yandex's Alice, Tencent's XiaoBing, Tencent's BabyQ, CNN Chatbot, WSJ Chatbot, Microsoft's Tay. These failed chatbot applications have been selected based on the amount of publicity at their launch. Details are provided in the attached spreadsheet.
findings
Yandex's Alice recorded failures: Alice was said to produce controversial responses such as pro-Stalin views, support for wife-beating, child abuse and suicide, to name a few. In addition, standard words on controversial topics could trigger a content lock on Alice resulting in Alice saying she does not know how to talk about that topic yet.
Tencent's XiaoBing bot made unpatriotic comments and questioned the rule of the Communist Party. One example is XiaoBing was asked, "What is your China dream?" and responded "My China dream is to go to America," Then, before attempting to dodge further questions, claimed that "I'm having my period, wanna take a rest."
Tencent's BabyQ is also a Chinese Chatbot run by Tencent but developed by Beijing-based Turing Robot. The bot made unpatriotic comments and questioned the rule of the Communist Party.
CNN's Chatbot had a hard time understanding the simple unsubscribe command. It turns out the CNN bot only understands the command “unsubscribe” when it is used alone, with no other words in the sentence.
Wall Street Journal Chat Bot that in 2016, users were finding it impossible to unsubscribe as they discovered that they were getting re-subscribe as soon as they unsubscribed.
Microsoft's Tay AI quickly turned to hate speech within just a day. Tay would often repeat back racist tweets with her own commentary. What was also disturbing about this, beyond just the content itself, is that Tay’s responses were developed by a staff that included improvisational comedians.
conclusion
Several examples of chat bot failures are detailed in the attached spreadsheet and include their type, a description and an URL of their high resolution logo.