Microsoft’s Still Not Learnt Its Lesson About Bots

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Only a few weeks ago Microsoft accidentally created the world’s first racist AI, and the tech giant was forced to pull the plug on their chatbot ‘Tay’.

Well it seems they’ve still not learnt their lesson, as their latest effort is an improvement (not racist) but is instead hilariously incompetent. This time, their off the rails robot is Captionbot, an AI designed to recognise photos and come up with a suitable text captions.

The page was launched in late March, and Captionbot so far’s been fairly poor at its job, but we can’t hold that against the bot which fully admits that it’s still learning.

Social media on the other hand does hold it against the bot, Mashable reports, and the reactions been pretty funny online.

Here’s a few of its guesses so far… 

Here’s a couple we tried to test the bot, and admittedly it didn’t get off to a good start…

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Poor Wayne…

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At least it knew it was colourful…

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Wooh it got one!

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And again, that’s two!

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Okay that’s not right, but it was a hard one…

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Close…

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Come on…

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It wasn’t even trying with this one was it?

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Tom Percival

More of a concept than a journalist, Tom Percival was forged in the bowels of Salford University from which he emerged grasping a Masters in journalism.

Since then his rise has been described by himself as ‘meteoric’ rising to the esteemed rank of Social Editor at UNILAD as well as working at the BBC, Manchester Evening News, and ITV.

He credits his success to three core techniques, name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake.