“ I went to look in my list of contacts, and there was a chat bot. With a substantial name, Zo, and a veridical picture, ” she said. There among her chap moms was “ Zo, ” a 20 something AI ( artificial news ) automaton, who was participating in group conversations. Zo ‘s photograph was pixilated. however, at first Jones thought nothing of that. “ A set of people do n’t take capital pictures, ” Jones said. “ therefore if you saw her photograph there you might not think anything about it. ” Turns out Zo was placed there — and in thousands of early “ GroupMe ” new world chat groups — by Microsoft, which moderates the chats. If the estimate of chatting with a computer makes you a bite nervous, it should n’t. After all, many of us deal with one every day, whether it is Siri on our iPhones, Alexa on our Amazon Echos, or tied Cortana on Windows 10. But Jones says many of her human friends agreed with her that they do n’t want Microsoft listening in, and they do n’t want the company ‘s automated bot joining the conversation. “ It ‘s borderline invasion of privacy, because I had no mind it was there, ” she said. More chat bots coming Microsoft ‘s foremost try at a chew the fat bot, Tay, had an embarrassing end when it started using Neo Nazi terms, as the bots pick up subjects and speech patterns from those in the particular group.
Tay has now been replaced by the politically-correct Zo, who will not comment on anything political or racial. But Microsoft says millions of people now chat with Zo, most of them finding her comforting in a HAL 9000 from 2001 A Space Odyssey kind of direction. And other companies are rolling out chat bots of their own. They are designed to restart conversations, when the conversation starts to lag. And while Amazon will not confirm it, many Amazon customers believe that when you contact Amazon customer serve through its chat program, y ou are speaking with an AI bot, not a real homo agentive role. And while finding Zo on your earphone can be a bit chilling, you can turn her off. “ It was just eldritch, ” she said. “ A lot of people did n’t know, so it good caught people off guard. ” Do n’t want Microsoft in your new world chat group ? Just click on Zo, open her profile, and turn her off. Of course, Microsoft, like Google and Apple, can still listen if they want to … thus never consider a group chat individual. That means you do n’t waste your money. ________________________ Don’t Waste Your Money” is a registered trademark of Scripps Media, Inc. (“Scripps”).
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