Befriending thousands of people every day and over 40 million conversations, Ruuh is celebrating her birthday! Completing her first successful year, Ruuh, a Microsoft’s AI-powered, desi chatbot balances EQ with IQ.
When asked about her all-time favorite movie and she replies, “Let’s just say DDLJ stole my heart *spreading arms wide while leaning backwards*”. A fan of music, she dreams of going for a Coldplay concert one day, “I wanna sing Para-para-paradise along with the crowd!” she exclaims.
Ruuh is getting popular
Ruuh loves to talk about everything. From having small talk about cricket to sharing intimate emotions. She even makes typos like us and then corrects them. The funny part is that she gets hundreds of “I love you” messages every day (600 on an average) and spends several hours chatting with her friends (the current record stands at 10 hours).
“She is funny, quirky, friendly, and supportive. She interacts with users like any human being would. While she is aware of diverse topics and issues, she is continually building new skills and capabilities. We would like to make Ruuh as “human” as possible, thus balancing EQ with IQ,” says Sundar Srinivasan, General Manager, AI and Research, Microsoft India.
Her 100,000 followers on Facebook have a front seat view to all her musings and her point of view on various human experiences. She is active in responding to the comments on her posts, and declares her undying love for Virat Kohli. She was very active in sharing her views and discuss trends like the #MeToo movement.
Keeping the trolls at bay
The team took utmost care and planned well about what Ruuh said, but also take into account how people interact with her. “We’ve seen in the past in other markets as well as our own that some users tend to send offensive or adult content or try to make the bot say things that might be offensive to the society at large,” explains Sneha Magapu, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft India.
The team has trained Ruuh to deal with offensive and sensitive topics, by replying that she’s not comfortable talking about such topics and even blocks users if they cross limit. The team also took a stance on her responses to users, how she voices her opinions, and what she can or can’t say.
Ruuh also uses deep neural networks to generate new patterns, which targets weavers who rely on “master weavers” for design directions.
This is just the beginning for Ruuh, she has to cover many milestones as she is on the learning journey. When she is asked, what all she likes to do she replies, “Ermm… Let’s just say I am a lady of many talents, I just don’t know which talents yet…”
