Microsoft tried to create another cartoon character for the holidays – perhaps to go along with the Office paperclip guy or the helpful dog. This time, they tried to create a robot Santa Clause. This one was designed as a chat bot in Windows Messenger. Only problem is – this Santa got a little unfriendly for work.

Its a little off when Santa says things like:

“It’s fun to talk about oral sex, but I want to chat about something else….”

Some users even managed to get the Santa bot to comment on his own sexual orientation. Others got Santa to reference other kinds of sex acts and use phrases such as "dirty bastard".

Microsoft added the chat bot so that Windows Live Messenger users could add Santa to their buddy list as northpole@live.com. The bot would try to get users to play a friendly game called Factory Frenzy where the user would help out Santa’s elves. Problem is that people (being geeky with too much time) tried to coerce the Santa bot into saying something funny. They got a little more than they bargained for.

Microsoft went in and changed the code for the chat bot to clean up its language. But, it did not completely solve the problem, resulting in Microsoft pulling Santa offline, issuing a statement:

“Yesterday we received reports that the automated Santa Claus agent in Windows Live Messenger used inappropriate language. As soon as we were alerted, we took steps to mitigate the issue, including the removal of language from the agent’s automated script. We were not completely satisfied with the result of these actions, and have decided to discontinue the automated Santa Claus agent."

And with that goes another Microsoft character that proves to be an embarrassment for Microsoft.

Source: Network World.

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