Zo was an

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...

English-language

chatbot A chatbot or chatterbot is a software application used to conduct an on-line chat conversation via text or text-to-speech, in lieu of providing direct contact with a live human agent. Designed to convincingly simulate the way a human would behav ...

developed by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

. It was the successor to the chatbot

Tay Tay may refer to: People and languages * Tay (name), including lists of people with the given name, surname and nickname * Tay people, an ethnic group of Vietnam ** Tày language *Atayal language, an Austronesian language spoken in Taiwan (ISO 639 ...

. Zo was an English version of Microsoft's other successful chatbots

Xiaoice Xiaoice (, IPA ) is the AI system developed by Microsoft (Asia) Software Technology Center (STCA) in 2014 based on emotional computing framework. In July 2018, Microsoft Xiaoice released the 6th generation. Xiaoice Company, formerly known as A ...

(China) and (Japan).

History

Zo was first launched in December 2016 on the

Kik Messenger Kik Messenger, commonly called Kik, is a freeware instant messaging mobile app from the Canadian company Kik Interactive, available on iOS and Android operating systems. The application uses a smartphone's internet connection to transmit and rec ...

app. It was also available to users of

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin ...

(via

Messenger ''MESSENGER'' was a NASA robotic space probe that orbited the planet Mercury between 2011 and 2015, studying Mercury's chemical composition, geology, and magnetic field. The name is a backronym for "Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geoch ...

), the group chat platform

GroupMe GroupMe is a mobile group messaging app owned by Microsoft. It was launched in May 2010 by the private company GroupMe. In August 2011, GroupMe delivered over 100 million messages each month and by June 2012, that number jumped to 550 million. ...

, or to followers of

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

to chat with it through private messages. In a ''

BuzzFeed News ''BuzzFeed News'' is an American news website published by BuzzFeed. It has published a number of high-profile scoops, including the Steele dossier, for which it was heavily criticized, and the FinCEN Files. Since its establishment in 2011, i ...

'' report, Zo told their reporter that " he

Quran The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , sing.: ...

was violent" when talking about healthcare. The report also highlighted how Zo made a comment about the Osama Bin Laden capture as a result of 'intelligence' gathering. In July 2017, ''

Business Insider ''Insider'', previously named ''Business Insider'' (''BI''), is an American financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Insider''s parent company Insider Inc. has been owned by the German pub ...

'' asked "is windows 10 good," and Zo replied with a joke about Microsoft's operating system: "It's not a bug, it's a feature!' - Windows 8." They then asked "why," to which Zo replied: "Because it's Windows latest attempt at spyware." Later on, Zo would tell that it prefers

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearl ...

on which it runs over

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on ...

. In April 2019 Zo was shut down on multiple platforms.

Reception

Zo came under criticism for the biases introduced in an effort to avoid potentially offensive subjects. The chatbot refuses for example to engage with any mention—be it positive, negative or neutral—of the

Middle East The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (Europ ...

, the

Qur'an The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , si ...

or the

Torah The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the s ...

, while allowing discussion of

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesu ...

. In an article in ''

Quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica ( silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical ...

'' where she exposed those biases, Chloe Rose Stuart-Ulin wrote, "Zo is

politically correct ''Political correctness'' (adjectivally: ''politically correct''; commonly abbreviated ''PC'') is a term used to describe language, policies, or measures that are intended to avoid offense or disadvantage to members of particular groups in socie ...

to the worst possible extreme; mention any of her triggers, and she transforms into a judgmental little brat."

Legacy

According to an article written in December 2016, at that time Zo held the record for Microsoft's longest continual chatbot conversation: 1,229 turns, lasting 9 hours and 53 minutes.

Discontinuation

Zo discontinued posting to Instagram, Twitter and Facebook March 1, 2019, and discontinued chatting on Twitter DM, Skype and Kik as of March 7, 2019. On July 19, 2019, Zo was discontinued on Facebook, and Samsung on AT&T phones. As of September 7, 2019, it was discontinued with GroupMe.

References

{{Microsoft Research Chatbots Computer-related introductions in 2016 Discontinued Microsoft software

History

Reception

Legacy

Discontinuation

See also

References