Chatbots, Gender, and Race on Web 2.0 Platforms: Tay.AI as Monstrous Femininity and Abject Whiteness.
In March 2016, Microsoft launched Tay.AI, a chatbot designed to experiment with conversational understanding through direct engagement with social media users. Marketed as the digital representation of an 18–24-year-old, cis-gendered female, Tay.ai was meant to be chatty, personable, friendly, and i...
| Publicado en: | Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society Vol. 47; no. 1; pp. 105 - 128 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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University of Chicago Press
Autumn2021
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=152489055&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 152489055 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00979740 SIG jtl: Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society issn: 00979740 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Autumn2021 vid: 47 iid: 1 pid: 415 pub: University of Chicago Press artinfo: ui: 152489055 10.1086/715227 ppf: 105 ppct: 23 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T db: hlh ui: 152489055 – @attributes: type: P db: hlh ui: 152489055 tig: atl: Chatbots, Gender, and Race on Web 2.0 Platforms: Tay.AI as Monstrous Femininity and Abject Whiteness. aug: au: Vorsino, Zoe affil: Department of Political Science. University of Hawaii at Manoa su: Microsoft Corp. Web 2.0 Social groups Gender Femininity Chatbots Internet marketing sug: subj: Web 2.0 Social groups Gender Femininity Microsoft Corp. Electronic shopping and mail-order houses Electronic Shopping Chatbots Internet marketing ab: In March 2016, Microsoft launched Tay.AI, a chatbot designed to experiment with conversational understanding through direct engagement with social media users. Marketed as the digital representation of an 18–24-year-old, cis-gendered female, Tay.ai was meant to be chatty, personable, friendly, and innocuous. Hours into launch, however, the chatbot's mimetic programming structure was taken advantage of by organized groups of online social media users, and Tay.ai began replying to queries with alt-right and neo-Nazi ideology. In this article, I explore the role that Tay.ai's assigned gender and race played in influencing both Tay.ai's initial design and, subsequently, the program's monstrous evolution. This is achieved through three avenues of thought. First, I situate Tay within the new public of Web 2.0, a space reliant on user participation and beholden to the neoliberal, racialized, and gendered architectures that produce it. I then consider Tay as an evolution of the chatbot, arguing that Tay is emblematic of both race and gender as social technologies. Third, I explore Tay's aberration from programmatic protocols in the context of the monstrous and the abject, suggesting that digital nonhuman ambivalence to programming and encoded control presents a space of productive creativity. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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