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Cortana Microsoft Chatbots

Microsoft’s new chatbot Murphy answers 'what if' questions and probably isn't racist

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By John McCarthy, Opinion Editor

August 10, 2016 | 3 min read

Microsoft has bravely unveiled a new chatbot called Murphy as it looks to pick itself up from the PR nightmare ignited by its learning Twitter bot Taybot – that very quickly reflected the worst traits mankind had to offer.

Murphy

Murphy Bot

Murphy is a different beast, boasting integration with Facebook Messenger, Skype, Telegram, and soon Kik and Slack, it creates pictures based upon 'what if' propositions.

Murphy builds upon Microsoft’s Azure machine learning capabilities; you may remember the HowOldBot from last year, the company claims that more than 90 million people interacted with that bot.

Charlie Chaplin beard

The newly released bot, first spotted by the Next Web, is also capable of machine learning, meaning the accuracy of its work will theoretically increase the more people interact with it.

Building upon HowOldBot, which already had picture upload and scanning capabilities, the team assembled Murphy’s 'what if' processes, that are now capable of instantly creating a host of creative and interesting picture alterations such as merging (What if Wayne Rooney was Cyndi Lauper or What if Donald Trump was a shoe) and the adaptation of existing features (what if Barack Obama had a big head).

Murphy2

The Murphy team said in a statement: “Murphy was created as an experimental project to showcase new technologies from Microsoft's Cortana Intelligence Suite – mainly Microsoft's Cognitive Services, including Bing Image Search and the Microsoft Bot Framework. It also uses other existing Microsoft technology like Azure Stream Analytics, Azure Data Lake and PowerBI.

“As bots evolve to become the next generation of applications, we're also thinking about our principles in bringing machine learning and intelligence together with human interaction. Our intention is to make sure we augment human ability with that of machines, that these new apps are trustworthy and that they're inclusive and respectful so they can be used by everyone. We're still learning, and so is our new bot Murphy.”

Beethoven

User uploaded images are only stored on the server for ten minutes said the group, looking to quell any privacy concerns too.

Have a shot of Murphy here.

Cortana Microsoft Chatbots

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