Microsoft is getting back onto the chatbot horse with Zo.

The social AI learns from human interactions to respond "emotionally and intelligently, providing a unique viewpoint."

"But she also has strong checks and balances in place to protect her from exploitation," Microsoft explained in a post outlining its commitment to artificial intelligence. Zo also benefits from being built on top of the existing proven technology used in the Xiaoice and Rinna AI chatbots active in China and Japan.

Microsoft no doubt wants to avoid the controversy caused by Tay, an experimental chatbot designed to interact with people so the company can better understand conversational speech.

Targeted at 18- to 24-year-olds, and designed to sound like one of them, Tay quickly went from happy-go-lucky chatbot to a full-on racist; she was temporarily pulled from Twitter after trolls taught her to repeat some extremely offensive viewpoints.

Microsoft has, hopefully, learned from its mistakes, introducing Zo to Kik messenger, where she has already held conversations—some lasting more than an hour—with more than 100,000 people in the US.

"It's a very personal experience," Harry Shum, executive vice president of Microsoft's Artificial Intelligence and Research group, said in a statement. "We're really moving from a world where we have to understand computers to a world where they will understand us and our intent, from machine-centric to human-centric, from perceptive to cognitive and from rational to emotional."

The new AI holds Redmond's record for longest continual chatbot conversation: 1,229 turns lasting nearly 10 hours.

Expected to launch on Skype and Facebook Messenger in the future, Zo is available now for a conversation on Kik. Users can also follow her on social media.

Microsoft recently bet big on artificial intelligence, launching a new division focused on the emerging technology.

Earlier this year, Microsoft open sourced its Computational Network Toolkit (CNTK), making its deep learning tools more accessible. And Redmond is one of six industry giants to join forces for the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society, hoping to "maximize [the] potential [of AI] and ensure it benefits as many people as possible.