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Microsoft Also Has An AI Bot That Makes Phone Calls To Humans (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: At an AI event in London today, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella showed off the company's Xiaoice (pronounced "SHAO-ICE") social chat bot. Microsoft has been testing Xiaoice in China, and Nadella revealed the bot has 500 million "friends" and more than 16 channels for Chinese users to interact with it through WeChat and other popular messaging services. Microsoft has turned Xiaoice, which is Chinese for "little Bing," into a friendly bot that has convinced some of its users that the bot is a friend or a human being. "Xiaoice has her own TV show, it writes poetry, and it does many interesting things," reveals Nadella. "It's a bit of a celebrity."
While most of Xiaoice's interactions have been in text conversations, Microsoft has started allowing the chat bot to call people on their phones. It's not exactly the same as Google Duplex, which uses the Assistant to make calls on your behalf, but instead it holds a phone conversation with you. "One of the things we started doing earlier this year is having full duplex conversations," explains Nadella. "So now Xiaoice can be conversing with you in WeChat and stop and call you. Then you can just talk to it using voice." (The term "full duplex" here refers to a conversation where both participants can speak at the same time; it's not a reference to Google's product, which was named after the same jargon.)
While most of Xiaoice's interactions have been in text conversations, Microsoft has started allowing the chat bot to call people on their phones. It's not exactly the same as Google Duplex, which uses the Assistant to make calls on your behalf, but instead it holds a phone conversation with you. "One of the things we started doing earlier this year is having full duplex conversations," explains Nadella. "So now Xiaoice can be conversing with you in WeChat and stop and call you. Then you can just talk to it using voice." (The term "full duplex" here refers to a conversation where both participants can speak at the same time; it's not a reference to Google's product, which was named after the same jargon.)
It will save having to pay salaries to all those cold-call marketing guys and phone scammers.
"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of Indian tech support voices suddenly cried out ....
Then silence
Am I the only one that remember "bots" being the hype about 10 years ago? There were entire startups dedicated to building them. SDKs were produced. They all failed because no one wants to use them.
That's their unofficial motto.
I wonder how long the Chinese that communicated with this bit of software will keep doing so once they realize that it's not a person. I really dislike the "new" Microsoft for bragging that they're intentionally fooling people.
Microsoft has a bot that makes phone calls. It only has one problem: It speaks English with an Indian accent...
"Hello, I am calling from Microsoft..."
You don't like honesty?
...Google Duplex phone number.
Really? Do we have to explain what full and half duplex is? Wasn't the internet and access to all the worlds knowledge supposed to make us smarter?
bickerdyke
Floridaman II.
Apple and Linux both have text to speech, too (and have for decades). Automating that does not equal a 'bot' or 'AI'. This is so retarded I don't know whether to slap Google for their lameness or smack myself for giving it this much attention.
Some of you guys are sheep waaay beyond the scope of the definition. I actually get it though - when you have been so sheltered and sequestered your entire life and never learned how mental or physical processes actually work by learning to do things for yourself, naturally you'd be equally clueless at creating a facsimile. Just because you suck at everything and a simple piece of software can outmatch you in most cases doesn't mean that is true for the rest of us, I do wish Silicon Valley could see past its personality disorders to the fact that functional people exist and that most 'disruption' looks a lot like ignorant hostility these days.
Remember how Microsoft's chat bot instantly turned racist after exposure to the internet? Now they've given it a phone which will enable it to start swatting people. Wait until they give it legs so it can join supremacist rallies....
I don't care how articulate your robot is: If it calls me, you will be taken to court.
that the phone call I got offering to fix my computer came from a Microsoft bot?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
For real this time.
"Xiaoice, which is Chinese for "little Bing" From my limited Chinese, I think "Xiao Bing" is chinese for "Little Ice". It must be a play on words.
What makes you think they don't already know?
Guarenteed future use:
Hello, I am a Nigerian Prince. You didn't answer my e-mail, so I am calling you to prove that I am real.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
So I'm creating and typing a document in Microsoft Word on my Windows 10 PC with "Built-in Telemetry That's Good For You" (TM). Suddenly the phone rings. "Hello?"
"Hi, this is Clippy. I see that you're typing a document. Do you need some help?"
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
... a friendly bot that has convinced some of its users that the bot is a friend or a human being.
Zuck, is that you?
From the linked Wikipedia article
Xiaobing, another chatbot developed by Microsoft, was pulled from TenCent's QQ app in 2017 after being asked about its "China dream" and responding: "My China dream is to go to America". The incident received press coverage alongside a similar contemporaneous incident, where an unrelated popular chatbot named "BabyQ" was pulled after being reported for making some similarly unpatriotic responses.
Apparently, the earlier Xiaobing was sent to a re-education camp and re-emerged as Xiaoice, a bot with the correct patriotic Chinese mindset, albeit with a less Chinese name.
Please hold on while I transfer this call to the Google AI bot.
Both of them can F*** O**
A Robo-caller is not AI.
Rick B.
How can you have a conversation if you both talk at the same time?
"Hello! I see that you answer a lot of phone calls!"
tone