Microsoft's TayBot Allegedly Posts Racist, Sexist, and Anti-Semitic Content to Twitter

March 24, 2016

Microsoft's Tay, an AI chatbot launched on March 23, 2016, was removed within a day due to inappropriate racist, sexist, and anti-semitic content. This incident underscores the importance of safe and secure AI practices. For those interested in shaping trustworthy AI and guardrails for AI development, JOIN US (HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM) where we Govern, Map, Measure, and Manage such incidents to prevent harm.

This TayBot incident is a compelling example of the need for robust AI governance. By joining Project Cerebellum, you can help establish guardrails for AI that foster safe and secure AI practices.

Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.665, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.664, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 4.1 — similarity 0.647, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: microsoft
Alleged developer: microsoft
Alleged harmed parties: twitter-users

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/6

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.