If Google can do it, so can we is probably what Microsoft is saying as they introduced their Artificial Intelligence bot that can make phone calls to humans. It was just a week ago that Google demonstrated its latest capability of Google Assistant to place a call on your behalf. Interestingly, Microsoft’s AI isn’t going to place a call for you, at least not yet. Instead it is going to talk to you !
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Such technologies cannot be pulled out of a hat like that and needs a lot of work behind. Microsoft has been working and testing this technology with millions of people in China. At an AI event in London today, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella showed off company’s Xiaoice ( pronounced SHAO ICE) social chat bot. Xiaoice means “little bing” in Chinese.
So far, according to Nadella, the bot has made about 500 million “friends” and more than 16 channels for Chinese user to interact with it through mediums like wechat. Some of the users are convinced that they are talking to a real human.” Xiaoice has her own TV show, it writes poetry, and it does many interesting things,” reveals Nadella. “It’s a bit of a celebrity”, said Nadella.
Nadella showed how Xiaoice can place calls and reports say the voice sounded very good. The bot , they say can even predict what the person will say next and quickly respond to that. In the voice demo, Xiaoice stopped the caller at the other end to tell him that there area strong winds and the windows should be closed before bed.
For the moment at least, Xiaoice is limited to china. It is soon expected to make its way in to the English speaking countries.
Looks like the next war between tech giants is going to be in this area.
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