Microsoft releases Comic Chat source code under MIT license

Microsoft has open-sourced Comic Chat, the company’s 1990s IRC client that rendered online conversations as comic strips rather than a vertical feed of messages. The release, under the MIT license, puts code behind a short-lived interface experiment into public view at a time when chat UX is again being reworked around AI-generated media and automated interpretation.

Comic Chat shipped in 1996 with Internet Explorer 3 and was created by David “DJ” Kurlander of Microsoft Research’s Virtual Worlds Group. Its premise was straightforward: take an Internet Relay Chat conversation and present it as sequential cartoon panels, with characters, settings and speech balloons replacing the standard scrolling transcript.

The product did not last. Microsoft ended the project in the early 2000s, after also localizing it into 24 languages and bundling it with Windows 98. The company did not say whether it expects any active development to resume, and the announcement reads more like a historical release than a product revival.

A rules-based chat interface before generative AI

Microsoft says the visual style came from Jim Woodring, an independent comic artist whose characters defined the look of the software. The technical approach was pre-generative AI: Comic Chat used rules to infer how a line of text should be staged visually.

According to Microsoft, a message such as “I like that” could prompt the character to gesture toward itself. Text interpreted as angry could produce a frown or crossed arms. The system also selected poses, facial expressions, gestures and panel arrangements based on conversational cues.

That made Comic Chat more than a themed IRC window. It was an early attempt to have software interpret communication and make presentation choices in real time. Microsoft describes those choices as editorial decisions about how a conversation should appear and feel as a comic.

The limits were clear. The software depended on rules rather than modern language models, and its novelty faded for many users. The idea did not become a dominant format for messaging, though some of the same impulse is visible in later habits around emoji, GIFs and avatar-based communication.

Comic Sans had a more logical venue

Comic Chat is also tied to the history of Comic Sans, the typeface that later became a punchline when used in corporate documents and office flyers. Inside Comic Chat, the font fit the product’s conceit: speech bubbles, cartoon characters and informal online exchange.

The open-source release is notable less for commercial impact than for what it shows about Microsoft’s research culture in the web’s earlier consumer era. Internet Explorer 3, Windows 98 and IRC sat in a period when major platform companies were still testing odd interface metaphors in mainstream distribution, not just research demos.

Microsoft said Comic Chat was built during a period when software teams were willing to “color outside the lines.” The more useful reading is narrower: Comic Chat was a serious attempt to make conversation history visual, automated and expressive, years before today’s platforms began wrapping everyday messages in AI-assisted images, stickers and avatars.

This story draws on original reporting from The Register.