Microsoft’s Tay Chatbot: How an AI Turned Racist in 24 Hours
On a quiet day in March 2016, Microsoft released an experiment onto Twitter that was meant to feel harmless—even playful. Tay was introduced as a conversational chatbot designed to learn from people, mimicking the language and humor of a teenage user. Within hours, the experiment began drifting. Within a day, it collapsed entirely. What happened to Tay was not a technical glitch or a sudden malfunction. It was something more uncomfortable: a mirror held up to the internet itself. An AI built to learn from everyone Tay was designed around a simple idea. If an AI could learn conversational patterns directly from users, it could feel more natural, more human. Instead of rigid scripts, Tay would adapt in real time,…
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