Microsoft spins out 5-year-old Chinese chatbot Xiaoice ࢀ" TechCrunch

by Flowing News Team Microsoft is shedding its empathetic chatbot Xiaoice into an independent entity, the U.S. software behemoth said (in Chinese) Monday, confirming an earlier report by the Chinese news site Chuhaipost in June. The announcement came several months after Microsoft announced it would close down its voice assistant app Cortana in China among other countries late last year. Xiaoice has over the years enlisted some of the best minds in artificial intelligence and ventured beyond China into countries like Japan and Indonesia. Microsoft said it called the shots to accelerate Xiaoiceࢀ™s ࢀœlocalized innovationࢀ and buildout of the chatbotࢀ™s…