“Ho Ho Ho” has a whole new meaning at Microsoft Messenger, where its Santa Claus IM bot (pictured at right), an automated chat buddy for children, apparently has a real potty mouth. A reader of the UK’s The Register was innocently showing his young niece how she could chat with Santa online when sex-imbued IM mayhem began.

The holiday cheer soured this week when a reader of a United Kingdom-based technology news site, The Register, reported that a chat between Santa and his underage nieces about eating pizza prompted Santa to bring up oral sex.

One of the publication’s writers replicated the chat Monday. After declining the writer’s repeated invitations to eat pizza, a frustrated Santa burst out with, “You want me to eat what?!? It’s fun to talk about oral sex, but I want to chat about something else.”

Ever willing to own up to their mistakes, the guys at Microsoft blame the non sequitur on the bad, bad children:

“It’s not like if you say, ‘Hello Santa,’ he’s going to throw inappropriate stuff at you,” said Sohn.

Sohn said Santa’s lewd comment was sparked by someone “pushing this thing to make it do things it wasn’t supposed to do.”

Nice one, Microsoft. But why would the words “oral sex” and “dirty bastard” be included in the IM bot code to begin with?

Via / The Register and AP-Yahoo! News