Xiaoice (Chinese: 微软小冰; pinyin: Wēiruǎn Xiǎobīng; literally: “Microsoft Little Ice”, IPA [wéiɻwânɕjâupíŋ]) is an advanced natural language chat-bot developed by Microsoft. It is primarily targeted at the Chinese community on the micro blogging service Weibo. The conversation is text based. The system learns about the user and provides natural language conversation. Microsoft gave Xiaoice a compelling personality and sense of “intelligence” by systematically mining the Chinese Internet for human conversations. Because Xiaoice collects vast amounts of intimate details on individuals, the program raises privacy questions.

Users can access Xiaoice on various platforms such as Weibo, JD.com, and 163.com. In Japan, Microsoft launched the service with mobile messaging app Line and named the chatbot Rinna. Qi Lu, executive vice president of Microsoft’s applications and services group, told media that Microsoft was also developing an English-language version of the chatbot.

Statistics

Xiaoice

• Over 20 million registered users
• The average user interacts with the service 60 times a month
• 850 thousand followers on Weibo
• Ranked as Weibo’s top influencer

Rinna

• 2.2 million followers on Line
• 34.3 thousand followers on Twitter

Privacy

Yao Baogang, the manager of the Microsoft program in Beijing stated, “We don’t keep track of user conversations with Xiaoice. We need to know the question, so we store it, but then we delete it. We don’t keep any of the data. We have a company policy to delete the user data.”