Xiaoice was born as chatbot but in over time it has become more and more like a complete virtual assistant , replacing in China and other Asian nations Cortana , decommissioned in the east at the end of last year. It is based on a very advanced artificial intelligence system developed by some of the leading veterans in the industry. Xiaoice, after debuting in China, has become so popular that it has landed in other countries such as Japan and Indonesia .

Xiaoice: in China the new Cortana is considered a virtual girlfriend

Xiaoice was initially unveiled in 2014 by a small team of researchers from the project Microsoft Bing , the well-known search engine from Redmond. Xiaoice, which in Chinese means “Little Bing” , immediately captured the attention of the Chinese public, who immediately identified her as a virtual girlfriend .

Modeled on the personality of a teenage girl, Xiaoice aims to add a more human and social element to the classic chatbot. Over time Xiaoice has been further developed and benefited from the latest artificial intelligence technologies behind Bing: it is now able to understand the moods of its users and meet their needs, tell stories when needed, sing, but also report the news and provide the weather forecast .

In the various stages of gestation, the project involved some of the most prestigious scientists in the world of AI, ranging from Lu Qi , who joined Baidu , the Google from China, as chief operating officer; to Harry Shum , former executive of Microsoft’s research and artificial intelligence unit who is now on the board of the news app administration News Break . Jing Kun , also involved in the Baidu project, is another of the AI ​​experts to have worked on Xiaoice.

Which, like almost all Western products landing in China, had to face the pressing machine of censorship local. In 2017, in fact, Xiaoice was removed from Tencent QQ , the most popular instant messaging program in China, accused of spreading politically sensitive messages.

Microsoft said that Xiaoice has a reach of 660 millions of users and 450 millions of smart devices globally. The chatbot has found applications in areas such as finance, automotive, real estate, design, art and fashion, with the ability to do ” inferences on the context, the tone of the user’s voice and his emotions and react appropriately “.