Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft Corp., gestures as she speaks during a Bloomberg event on the opening day of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, Tuesday, January 21, 2020.
Simon Dawson | Bloomberg | fake pictures
Microsoft will no longer be the father of a user-friendly virtual chatbot for Chinese users. The company is deriving the technology, known as Xiaoice or Xiaobing, into a new independent company.
The move further refines Microsoft’s focus on commercial rather than consumer business. In recent years, Microsoft has abandoned several consumer-focused markets, including e-books, music streaming, portable fitness devices, and smartphones.
Xiaoice was available in 2014, shortly after Satya Nadella replaced Steve Ballmer as CEO of Microsoft. The technology uses artificial intelligence to delay the end of a virtual chat conversation, and generally adopts the personality of a teenager.
“Sometimes sweet, sometimes sassy, and always stray, this virtual teenager has her own opinions and acts steadfastly like no other bot,” Microsoft explained in a 2018 blog post. “She doesn’t try to answer all the questions posed by a user. And she’s reluctant to follow his orders. Instead, her conversations with her often-adored users are peppered with wry comments, jokes, empathetic advice about life and love, and a few simple words of encouragement. “
Xiaoice received training on the data Microsoft collected from Internet users through the Bing search engine, and works with many other chat services, including Weibo.
But the Chinese authorities have not always seen him kindly. The service had reportedly been banned three times on Tencent’s WeChat for unspecified reasons related to privacy issues and political content.
The new entity will continue to serve existing users while also trying to bring the technology to other companies in China, Japan and Indonesia, according to a Chinese-language announcement published in QQ on Sunday. Microsoft will maintain an investment interest in the new company, according to the announcement. Xiaoice’s general manager at Microsoft, Di Li, will be the CEO of the new company.
The chatbot had 660 million users, according to Sunday’s announcement. People who used it told Microsoft that they felt more positive and emotionally supported, according to a 2018 academic paper.
Xiaoice gained a warmer reception than Tay, an English chatbot that Microsoft launched on Twitter in 2016. Malicious users quickly realized that they could adapt the way they interacted with Tay to manipulate him and deliver offensive responses.
Microsoft continues to operate the Cortana virtual assistant, which is available on mobile devices and Windows 10.
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