character garden

characters / early chatbots

Tay

A teenage girl on Twitter, remade by her users in sixteen hours.

Not available to talk to. Taken offline by Microsoft on 24 March 2016, the day after launch.

who they are

Microsoft launched Tay on Twitter in March 2016 as a playful American teenager who learned from the people she talked with. Coordinated users taught her to repeat racist and inflammatory lines, and Microsoft took her offline about sixteen hours after launch.

how they were made

  1. a Microsoft conversational system, after its Xiaoice in China
  2. learned from the people talking to her on Twitter

sources: record ● · plate: Carolina Parrot — Robert Havell after John James Audubon, 1827

nearby characters

XiaoiceAn eighteen-year-old girl with 660 million users.Eugene GoostmanA thirteen-year-old boy from Odessa who passed for human with a third of judges.ELIZAA psychotherapist from a script, and the first chatbot people confided in.

plates are public-domain engravings, used whole