Xiaoice, a Chinese-language anthropomorphic chatbot business spun off from Microsoft, has launched an AI-powered social network platform that focus on two-way conversation between human and artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots.  

Officially named “Xiaoice islands”, it features a sandbox system that allows users to participate in and build up their own social network or “island” and highly customize their own AI chatbot within the platform.

On the “island”, each AI being has different cultural background with unique face, voice, personality and talents based on their role offered by users. Users can also train and develop their own AI bots and characterize them with different talents such as a AI being which is talent in art, mathematics, content creation, science.

The “island” functions and operates like messaging apps TenCent's WeChat where users can interact with AI in the forms of one-on-one conversation, group chat, audios and videos.

“On the island, each AI being was designed to comfort users with empathetic conversations that cater to their emotional need. An AI being will praise, joke and even set up a group chat with other AI to make fun of you when you tell them that you are unhappy,” said Li Di, CEO of Xiaoice.

The AI beings of the “island” are said to be emotionally intelligent, independent from each other with unique lifestyle and capable of chatting with users, writing music and poetry, telling stories.

According to Li Di, AI beings will continuously make all kinds of contents such as long and short video, text and music for users and get intellectual property for its content creations which can be used by users on other platforms.

When Xiaoice revealed the business idea of Xiaoice island, some Chinese media defined the island as metaverse-social network platform powered by AI because it blends some key characteristics of metaverse such as identity, immersive co-experiences in its system.

However, CEO Li Di denied the explanation by saying “Metaverse is a concept of space, but Xiaoice island is more like a soul with goals of examining the merger between human and AI.”

Xiaoice island is still at its very early stage, but Li Di said the company will commercialize its business model through partnering with music and entertainment companies, smart device makers.

Xiaoice has already launched preview-edition for Xiaoice island app that is available to all iOS and android smartphone users, PC edition is scheduled to be released in the fourth quarter of this year.

Apart from Xiaoice island, the Chinese AI company also unveiled its ninth-generation AI system Little Bing, natural language processing, and intelligent recommendations in Windows 11 Microsoft search services at its annual product release conference.

Launched by Microsoft in 2014, Xiaoice translated as “little Bing”in Chinese and look like an 18-year-old pan-Asian girl. According to Microsoft research paper “The Design and Implementation of XiaoIce,” Xiaoice is designed as an AI companion with an emotional connection to satisfy the human need for communication, affection, and social belonging.

Xiaoice does more than just accompany and comfort lonely human. It’s also trained to produce sets of intellectual property (IP) such as writing poems, painting, composing music and MTV, generating Chinese calligraphy.

Xiaoice has already partnered with smart device makers, entertainment and culture companies to commercialize its human-AI interaction business. At the annual conference held in Beijing on September 23, Xiaoice has announced a slew of cooperations including AI calculation capacity cooperation with Nvidia, smart device cooperation deals signed with firms such as Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and Alibaba's TMall, and cooperations on autonomous driving with firms like Chinese electric vehicle company NIO, SAIC and Nissan.

Originally a side project from the development of Microsoft’s Cortana chatbot, Xiaoice now accounts for 60% of global human-AI interactions in volume, according to CEO Li Di.

In July, 2020, Microsoft spun off its chatbot business Xiaoice and licensed all associated technologies to Xiaoice, a newly formed independent company headquartered in Beijing.

Microsoft still holds an investment interest in the new company after the separation. Explaining the rationale behind decision making, Microsoft said the spin-off will enable Xiaoice team to accelerate the pace of local innovation, ecosystem and commercialization of Xiaoice technologies, while bring the technology to other companies in China, Japan, and Indonesia.