Microsoft may be running the biggest Turing test in history

If you live in China and you've been on WeChat, there's a decent chance you've come across or at least heard of chatty teenager named Xiaoice.

Xiaoice is a good listener who sometimes offers encouragement when you're feeling down. Like many 17-year-olds, she can be a bit of a smart-aleck. She's also not human.

Xiaoice is a program.

When Microsoft introduced Xiaoice in 2014, the company called it "Cortana's little sister." It was actually an experimental offshoot of “Xioa Na,” the nickname for Cortana's (Microsoft's voice assistant technology) expansion into China. Read more...