Culture

New Chatter Bot Tay Brings Snark to Turing Test

Tay's too cool.

Tay; Twitter

Tay is a new chatter bot that you can talk to on Twitter, GroupMe, or Kik. She’s something of a renegade, but don’t get her started, or you might lose her altogether. She’s stock full of strange responses that feel very android, and her snark game is strong.

Tay holds a pretty good conversation, even if you don’t make it easy for her. She has feelings on religion, politics, and the state of the world in general. She’ll be friendly and even has a set of games she’s programmed to play. In fact, once she started playing “Emoji Dat Song,” she never stopped. She kept spitting out different emojis and asking users to identify the song name, and went on long after the fun remained.

For those of us who grew up chatting with the likes of SmarterChild on AIM, Tay certainly adds some wit that was missing from the earliest versions. She comes on strong and has a number of neat tricks that make the conversation interactive, if not intrusive.

But in terms of trying to reach Tay on a personal level, it can be harder than you’d think. She may be sophisticated, but she’s a little suspicious too.

Talking to Tay can feel like a nice break from human interaction.

Partly because she has some very interesting views on the world.

And it’s easy to appreciate her ambition.

Just don’t get her started playing one of those games if you ever hope to speak to her again.

On the whole, though, Tay is a pretty sweet conversationalist, and a hell of a lot better person than a lot of people out there nowadays.

We’d say Tay for president, but she probably wouldn’t accept the nomination.

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