Tuesday, 1 August 2017

Facebook acquires Ozlo

After shutting down one of its Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems as chatbots defied the human generated algorithms and started communicating in their own language, Facebook has acquired an AI startup Ozlo to enhance its Messenger’s Personal assistant.
The four-year-old California-based startup that specializes in understanding text-based conversations claims that its virtual assistants can understand and provide answers to questions which do not have simple “yes” or “no”. Ozlo has raised $14 million from a number of investors. The startup has 30 employees, majority of whom would be joining Messenger in Facebook’s offices in either Menlo Park (California) or Seattle (Washington).

The social media giant on Sunday pulled the plug on its AI system because things got out of hand. The AI did not start shutting down computers worldwide or something of the sort, but it stopped using English and started using a language that it created. Initially, the AI agents used English to converse with each other but later, they created a new language that only AI systems could understand, thus, defying the purpose of the researchers. Earlier this year, Messenger’s product head Stan Chudnovsky said Facebook was focused on text-based AI because voice conversations like that of Apple or Google required an extra step.

No comments: