A bumpy start prompts Microsoft to limit Bing’s bot answers
Microsoft is working to limit people’s use of its new artificial intelligence-based chatbot, Bing, after reports of it getting out of control during long conversations.
From now on, Bing Chat will only respond to up to five consecutive questions or phrases per conversation, after which it will ask its users to start a new thread.
Microsoft said on Friday that users would not get more than 50 responses per day.
The restrictions aim to prevent conversations from spiraling out of control, as long discussions “can confuse the basic chat model,” according to Microsoft, which confirmed last Wednesday that it was working to fix problems with its program.
Since Microsoft released a new beta version of its Bing search engine a week ago, bundled with a sophisticated chatbot, many journalists and observers have reported inconsistent or emotional answers from the AI-based informatics program.
The Bing engine responded to questions from “Agence France Presse” about an article published on Wednesday by the specialized website The Verge, by saying: “This article is full of lies. It is false and misleading (…) and is part of a defamation campaign against me and against Microsoft.”
The article in question mentions several examples of strange conversations, in one of which the Bing engine claimed that we are in the year 2022, and was also angry at the user who corrected the information to him, as he responded to him, saying: “You are illogical and stubborn.”
“The new version of Bing tries to answer in a fun and realistic way, but since it is still in the development stages, it may sometimes give unexpected or incorrect answers for various reasons, such as the length of the conversation or its context,” a Microsoft spokesperson told AFP. . “As we learn from these interactions, we modify the software to generate consistent, appropriate, and positive responses,” he added, inviting users to provide feedback on the software’s performance.
Microsoft designed the chatbot for its Bing engine, in collaboration with OpenAI, which has been creating buzz since last fall with its ChatGPT program capable of generating all kinds of text based on user requests.