Microsoft is shedding its empathetic chatbotXiaoice into an independent entity, the U.S. software behemoth said Monday.
The announcement came several months after Microsoft announced late last year it would close down its voice assistant app Cortana in China among other countries.
Xiaoice has over the years enlisted some of the best minds in artificial intelligence and ventured beyond China into countries like Japan and Indonesia. Microsoft said it called the shots to accelerate Xiaoice’s “localized innovation” and buildout of the chatbot’s “commercial ecosystem.”
The spin-off will see the new entity license technologies from Microsoft for subsequent research and development in Xiaoice and continue to use the Xiaoice brand, while Microsoft will retain its stakes in the new company.
In 2014, a small team of Microsoft’s Bing researchers unveiled Xiaoice, which means “Little Bing” in Chinese. The bot immediately created a sensation in China and was regarded by many as their virtual girlfriend. The chatbot came just a few weeks after Microsoft rolled out Cortana in the country. Modeled on the personality of a teenage girl, Xiaoice aims to add a more human and social element to chatbots. In Microsoft’s own words, she wants to be a user’s friend.
Microsoft claimed that Xiaoice has a reach of 660 million users and 450 million third-party smart devices globally, at last count. The chatbot has found applications in such areas as finance, retail, auto, real estate and fashion, in which it claimed it can “mine context, tonality and emotions from text to create unique patterns within seconds.”
2014年，微软Bing研究人员的一个小团队推出了Xiaoice，它的中文意思是“ Little Bing”。该机器人立即在中国引起轰动，被许多人视为他们的虚拟女朋友。微软在该国推出Cortana仅仅几周后，就出现了聊天机器人。Xiaoice以一个十几岁女孩的个性为模型，旨在为聊天机器人添加更多的人文和社交元素。用微软自己的话说，她想成为用户的朋友。
Microsoft is shedding its empathetic chatbotXiaoice into an independent entity, the U.S. software behemoth said Monday.
The spin-off will see the new entity license technologies from Microsoft for subsequent research and development in Xiaoice and continue to use the Xiaoice brand, while Microsoft will retain its stakes in the new company.
