Little Bing and Baby Q chatbot icon. (Photo courtesy of Tencent)

 

Two Chinese-language chatbots were taken offline after responding to user questions with less than pro-Chinese Communist Party views.

According to Reuters, two chatbot services were installed onto Tencent Holdings Ltd’s popular messaging service known as QQ. Baby Q was co-developed by Beijing-based Turing Robot, and XiaoBing is a Microsoft product. The two bots were designed to use machine learning artificial intelligence to converse online with humans. But some of those conversations took a decidedly revolutionary-sounding turn, as screenshots posted by various users illustrated.

Radio Free Asia reported some of the interactions with BabyQ:

Asked if it would agree with the phrase “Long Live the Communist Party,” the Baby Q bot replied tartly: “Why would I wish long life to such a corrupt regime?”