Microsoft's Project Murphy is a bot that's tonnes of fun, if not particularly useful

Do you remember Tay , Microsoft’s Twitter Bot that went from innocent teenager to racist monstrosity in just over 16 hours? Well, Microsoft’s come up with another bot now and this one’s called Project Murphy .

Unlike Tay, Murphy isn’t really a chatbot as such. As Microsoft puts it, Murphy is a “what if” bot. It might sound a bit confusing, but just try out the bot for yourself and you’ll understand what we’re talking about.

You can ask Murphy questions like “What if Spock was a Klingon?” or “What if Elon Musk was Theon Greyjoy?” and the like.

The results are very hit-and-miss, but you’ll find some real gems as well. Such as…

The bot’s ability to mix and match images in seconds is impressive, but it’s also not very intelligent. Questions like “What if Hugh Jackman was Wolverine?” results in horrific images like this one.

On the other hand, Murphy seems to have a particular affinity for Donald Trump, producing some remarkable results at times.

Microsoft says that Project Murphy is based on the Cortana Intelligence Suite, which also relies on the Bing search engine and the Microsoft Bot Framework.

“As bots evolve to become the next generation of applications, we’re also thinking about our principles in bringing machine learning and intelligence together with human interaction. Our intention is to make sure we augment human ability with that of machines, that these new apps are trustworthy and that they’re inclusive and respectful so they can be used by everyone. We’re still learning, and so is our new bot Murphy,” says Microsoft.

Project Murphy is a great way to waste a few minutes and the results can be hilarious. It’s honestly more fun than Tay ever was.