The Twitter profile picture of Tay
Tay was an
artificial intelligence chatterbot that was originally released by
Microsoft Corporation via
Twitter on March 23, 2016; it caused subsequent controversy when the bot began to post inflammatory and offensive tweets through its Twitter account, forcing Microsoft to shut down the service only 16 hours after its launch.
Tay was released on Twitter on March 23, 2016 under the name TayTweets and handle @TayandYou. It was presented as "The AI with zero chill". Tay started replying to other Twitter users, and was also able to caption photos provided to it into
a form of Internet memes.
Some users on Twitter began tweeting
politically incorrect phrases, teaching it inflammatory messages revolving around common themes on the internet,
such as "redpilling", GamerGate, and "cuckservatism". As a result, the robot began releasing
racist and
sexually-charged messages in response to other Twitter users.