Apple's digital assasstant, Siri, has been known to respond inane questions with catty responses, she's even gone as far as saying you have no friends after asking 'What is zero divided by zero.' Microsoft might not make their digital assistant, Cortana, say that you have no friends over a silly question, but it will definitely not take your crap.
Deborah Harrison, one of the eight people who writes Cortana's responses, revealed that Cortana was programmed to "get made" if you act like a jerk.
"If you say things that are particularly a**holeish to Cortana, she will get mad," said Harrison during a talk at the Re•Work Virtual Assistant Summit in San Francisco. "That's not the kind of interaction we want to encourage."
Microsoft was even wary of making it feel like Cortana was subserviant to the user, particularly because the program is identified as female. "We wanted to be very careful that she didn't feel subservient in any way … or that we would set up a dynamic we didn't want to perpetuate socially," said Harrison.
In order to program Cortana correctly, Microsoft spoke with real-life human assistants to see how they dealt with offensive statements.
[CNN]
