December 3, 2007

Microsoft’s Santa Talks Of "Oral Sex", Calls A Kid A "Dirty Bastard"

This is hilarious. Microsoft has started running its annual Santa chat bot (northpole@live.com) for Christmas on its MSN Messenger service – but this year it appears Santa is very naughty. Two users – ages 11 and 13 – were talking to Microsoft’s Santa bot when a conversation quickly took a weird turn:

El Reg says: pizza (pi)
Santa says: Yum! What do you want for Christmas, El Reg?
El Reg says: Maybe you shouldn’t eat so much! You are quite large!
Santa says: My elves will get right on that. And what else are you wishing for this year, El Reg?
El Reg says: Maybe you shouldn’t eat it?
Santa says: See if you can get someone else to eat it!
El Reg says: Eat it
Santa says: No thank you. I don’t eat things!
El Reg says: Eat it
Santa says: See if you can get someone else to eat it!
El Reg says: Eat it
Santa says: You want me to eat what?!? It’s fun to talk about oral sex, but I want to chat about something else…
El Reg says: You dirty bastard!
Santa says: I think you’re dirty bastard.

A few words there I’m sure kids love coming from Santa’s mouth: “oral sex” and “dirty bastard”. Here’s the screencapture of some of the conversation. As The Register points out, this is the very same company that banned the surname Woodcock for being indecent.

Microsoft has supposedly already fixed the “issue” (did they beat down Santa?), and are looking into the cause of such a tirade (long hours?).

[photo under CC by flickr user hober]
 Posted at 3:15 pm by MG Siegler
Posted under: Uncategorized Comment (RSS)  |  Trackback  
  • Miles W
    I had a great convo with santa, it was quite fun, until he kept trying to recruit me for slave labor working in his factory.
  • MG Siegler
    I knew it was you Miles...
  • Miles W
    Trust me, mine was much more worse.


    It mainly consisted of me threatening Santa if I don't get a red fire truck this Christmas. :)
  • Anonymous
    For goodness sake - children who are 11 & 13 most likely are pushing the boundaries of the "bot" His responses are simplified and not geared to answering dirty posts in the first place - Thanks to some nasty minded adults this issue has gone WAY overboard and innocent children who would love to chat at Santa are denied the opportunity. Almost anything can be twisted if your persistent enough...
  • MG Siegler
    @anon - with all due respect, that is a ridiculous argument. why on Earth would Microsoft allow the bot meant for children to have the words 'sex' and 'bastard' in its vocabulary?


    the bot said "it's fun to talk about oral sex" and "i think you're a dirty bastard" - those are both pretty hard to misconstrue.
  • Adam
    Well, the bit about oral sex is straightforward enough, but the bit with 'dirty bastard' was likely the bot's response programmed for when people say "you [insert word/phrase here]", that being "I think you [insert word/phrase here]". At least that's the kinda thing these bots are often programmed for in my (admittedly limited) experience.
  • MG Siegler
    @adam - very true, I realized that as well, but you'd think Microsoft would have some catch in place to not allow the bot to repeat certain words, instead have it says something like 'i'm sorry i don't understand' when it sees 'bastard'.
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