Xiaoice

Xiaoice is an empathetic chatbot targeted at the Chinese, Japanese, and Indonesian market originally developed by Microsoft since 2014 and spun out as an independently-operating company in July 2020.

A small team of Microsoft's Bing researchers released Xiaoice in 2014, which in Chinese means "little Bing." The bot created a sensation in China immediately, and was seen by many as their virtual girlfriend.

In July 2020, Microsoft announced that it will spin out Xiaoice into its own company.

The spin-off will see the new entity license technologies from Microsoft for subsequent research and development in Xiaoice and continue to use the Xiaoice brand (and Rinna in Japanese), while Microsoft will retain its stakes in the new company.