{
 "id": "AIR-2020-0022",
 "slug": "microsoft-tay-chatbot-data-poisoning-incident",
 "title": "Microsoft Tay Chatbot Data Poisoning Incident",
 "summary": "Microsoft's Twitter chatbot Tay was manipulated by coordinated user inputs to generate offensive language. The bot was decommissioned within 24 hours of its launch following the incident.",
 "type": "attack_on_ai",
 "categories": [
  "data_poisoning"
 ],
 "severity": 3,
 "targets": [
  "Microsoft"
 ],
 "products": [
  "Tay"
 ],
 "incident_date": "2016-03-23",
 "incident_date_precision": "day",
 "first_reported": "2020-10-23",
 "sources": [
  {
   "url": "https://atlas.mitre.org/studies/AML.CS0009",
   "publisher": "MITRE ATLAS",
   "title": "Tay Poisoning",
   "published_at": "2020-10-23"
  },
  {
   "url": "https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/6",
   "publisher": "AI Incident Database",
   "title": "AIID - Incident 6: TayBot",
   "published_at": "2020-10-23"
  },
  {
   "url": "https://avidml.org/database/avid-2022-v013",
   "publisher": "AVID",
   "title": "AVID - Vulnerability: AVID-2022-v013",
   "published_at": "2020-10-23"
  },
  {
   "url": "https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2016/03/25/learning-tays-introduction",
   "publisher": "Microsoft Security",
   "title": "Microsoft BlogPost, \"Learning from Tay's introduction\"",
   "published_at": "2020-10-23"
  },
  {
   "url": "https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/artificial-intelligence/machine-learning/in-2016-microsofts-racist-chatbot-revealed-the-dangers-of-online-conversation",
   "publisher": "spectrum.ieee.org",
   "title": "IEEE Article, \"In 2016, Microsoft's Racist Chatbot Revealed the Dangers of Online Conversation\"",
   "published_at": "2020-10-23"
  }
 ],
 "source_count": 5,
 "confidence": 0.95,
 "status": "published",
 "origin": "seed_atlas",
 "tags": [
  "chatbot",
  "data-poisoning",
  "twitter"
 ],
 "created_at": "2026-10-18T06:55:08.239Z",
 "updated_at": "2026-10-18T06:55:08.239Z"
}