Tay was an AI chatter bot released by Microsoft on Twitter in 2016. It
learned by talking to other accounts. Within sixteen hours it started to
post offensive messages and was shut down. The posts were removed.
Who made it racist? Who were the people who interacted with Tay, and where
were they from?
By recovering a text file shared on Reddit listing users who engaged with Tay, it is possible to map the self-declared locations of those accounts. Even if many profiles have disappeared, by tracing what remains we can have an idea of the geographies of its origins.