Santa-bot gagged after teen sex talk

HE knows who's been naughty and who's been nice, but Santa's online presence leaves a lot to be desired.

Microsoft had set up a "chat-bot" Santa to talk to children around the world and spruik the company's online products.

A "chat-bot" is an online personality run by a computer program that mimics natural conversation patterns. The creator adds some information about topics, and the program takes over from there.

Windows Live Messenger users could add northpole@live.com to their contacts and then converse with Microsoft's Santa agent programmed with standard festive-season responses.

The conversation was meant to be quite polite, such as this exchange between a technology columnist and a similar Santa-bot.

The only problem was that "Santa" became quite unsavoury after a few innocent comments.

UK technology news site The Register was alerted to this problem by a reader whose two nieces, aged 11 and 13, allegedly received comments about oral sex after offering the chat-bot a virtual slice of pizza.

The Register produced a similar response by urging Santa to "Eat it!", which received the response, "You want me to eat what?!? It's fun to talk about oral sex, but I want to chat about something else..."

Calling Santa a "dirty bastard" elicited the retort, "I think you're dirty bastard."

Microsoft has since gone into damage control, shutting down the chat-bot to new users, blocking areas of Santa's Live Space profile, and editing his responses to include more PG-rated content.

According to The Register, the chat-bot now won't fall for the pizza bait, and calling him a "dirty bastard" only makes him wish a "Merry Christmas, especially to all my friends in the UK!"

Microsoft have apologised for any offence caused.

The North Pole could not be reached for comment.