Microsoft has silenced its Twitter bot after it denied that the Holocaust happened, said it supported genocide and told followers that “Jews did 9/11”.

Yesterday, the multi-billion pound company launched “Tay,” an experimental social media bot aimed at young people, which learns how to talk through conversations with other Twitter users.

But in its first 24 hours, Tay tweeted that the Shoah “was made up” and told another user who asked if comedian Ricky Gervais was an atheist that “ricky gervais learned totalitarianism from adolf hitler, the inventor of atheism”.

Answers were confused and mixed, though. In response to a different Twitter user, who asked whether Tay thought the Holocaust was a lie, the bot tweeted: “i don’t believe it”.

Microsoft has deactivated the bot’s ability to tweet, placing the blame on users who, it said, had grouped together to sabotage Tay.

A spokeswoman for the company said: “The AI chatbot Tay is a machine learning project, designed for human engagement. It is as much a social and cultural experiment, as it is technical.

“Unfortunately, within the first 24 hours of coming online, we became aware of a coordinated effort by some users to abuse Tay’s commenting skills to have Tay respond in inappropriate ways. As a result, we have taken Tay offline and are making adjustments.”