Poppy is the singer whose spooky YouTube videos have won her a fervent online fanbase – and now a brand partnership with Microsoft to promote one of its chatbots.
No, not the Nazi one, thankfully.
Zo is a Microsoft-developed bot that lives on services including Facebook Messenger and Kik, and which is now being featured in some of Poppy’s YouTube videos.
“I teamed up with Zo to make high-quality internet content,” as she puts it in one of them.
“Poppy is a human who is exploring what it’s like to be an AI, and Zo is doing her best to try and figure out what it means to be human,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Polygon. “They’re a dynamic duo and, what we realised, is a bidirectional critical engagement with both Poppy and Zo and people who interact with them.”
Sorry to spring a phrase like ‘bidirectional critical engagement’ on you so early in the year without warning.
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