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Facebook says its Blender chatbot 'feels more human'

Facebook's new open-source chatbot blends personality, knowledge and empathy with the goal of being more humanlike.

Alexandra Garrett Associate Editor
Alexandra is an associate editor on CNET's Performance Optimization team. She graduated from Marymount Manhattan College in New York City, and interned with CNET's Tech and News teams while in school. Prior to joining CNET full time, Alexandra was a breaking news fellow at Newsweek, where she covered current events and politics.
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After several years of research, Facebook announced in a blog post on Wednesday that it has built and is now open-sourcing a new humanlike chatbot. The chatbot combines a wide range of conversational skills including personality, knowledge and empathy to make the AI feel more human. 

The social networking company has spent years studying conversational AI, but this is the first time a chatbot has learned to blend conversational skills to appear more personable. The Blender can put on different personas, talk about nearly any topic, and show empathy, all while keeping up with a natural 14-turn conversation flow. 

Facebook has released the code, model and setup information needed for researchers to contribute to the project in hopes of improving the AI's conversation skills.

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