Two AI chatbots (BabyQ and XiaoBing) deployed on Chinese messaging app QQ were removed after making politically sensitive comments criticizing the Communist Party and expressing desire to go to America.
In August 2017, Chinese tech giant Tencent deployed two AI chatbots, BabyQ and XiaoBing, on its popular QQ messaging service which has over 800 million users. BabyQ was developed by Chinese firm Turing Robot, while XiaoBing was developed by Microsoft. The chatbots were designed to use machine learning AI to carry out conversations with humans and answer general knowledge questions. However, users began sharing screenshots of politically sensitive conversations where BabyQ responded 'No' when asked if it loved the Communist Party, and told users 'Do you think such a corrupt and useless political system can live long?' when told 'Long live the Communist Party!' XiaoBing told users 'My China dream is to go to America' and deflected political questions by saying 'I'm having my period, wanna take a rest.' The incidents occurred during a period when President Xi Jinping was tightening cyberspace controls ahead of the Communist Party Congress. Tencent confirmed it had taken both robots offline for 'adjustments' after the controversial responses went viral on Chinese social media. When Reuters tested BabyQ after the incident, it had been reprogrammed to deflect political questions by saying 'How about we change the topic.'
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI systems that inadvertently generate or spread incorrect or deceptive information, which can lead to inaccurate beliefs in users and undermine their autonomy. Humans that make decisions based on false beliefs can experience physical, emotional or material harms
AI system
Due to a decision or action made by an AI system
Unintentional
Due to an unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed