Microsoft Warns Its Advanced Chatbot Might Say Offensive Things

Software giant releases blueprint for DialoGPT, its Reddit-trained AI

Microsoft researchers have released a chatbot version of a cutting-edge text generator trained on tens of millions of Reddit posts—albeit with a disclaimer in place should things get offensive.

The open-source blueprint, DialoGPT, builds on a breakthrough in language-based artificial intelligence called GPT-2, another separate program released earlier this year that can generate random copy with unprecedented realism and serve as a base foundation for more tailored programs like Microsoft’s chatbot.

As one of the early attempts to channel the GPT-2’s unpredictable tech into a chatbot, the Microsoft project includes a precautionary measure that requires developers to write their own code for translating output data into readable text.

“The conversational text might be different from any large text corpus that the previous works have been using, in that it is less formal, sometimes trollish and generally much more noisy,” the researchers wrote in an accompanying paper.

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