Microsoft has boosted its Bing search engine, to which it not too long ago added synthetic intelligence-powered chat capabilities, by rising the variety of chats it will possibly have with a consumer in a day from 100 to 120.

When Microsoft first launched Bing’s new function, which is predicated on the favored ChatGPT chatbot, there was loads of preliminary pleasure… however then Bing began behaving surprisingly. Folks seen that Bing’s AI chatbot would begin appearing more and more bizarrely the longer their conversations with it went on.

This included Bing giving out incorrect info, after which having what can solely be described as a tantrum when its errors have been identified, which led to Microsoft rapidly limiting the quantity of responses Bing might give inside a chat in a bid to curtail these worrying conversations.

It labored, however it got here at a price, as Bing immediately turned much more boring.

Fixing the chat

The very last thing Microsoft needs is for Bing to be thought-about boring once more, so it’s been understandably eager to extend the chat restrict as soon as the bugs have been ironed out, so the information that it’s providing an enormous improve to 120, which follows a rise from 60 to 100, is definitely welcome.

Additionally, Microsoft’s preliminary restrict to only 5 replies was seen by many to be too drastic – it definitely restricted the usefulness of Bing by slicing chats quick – and it took the enjoyable out of it as effectively.

As MSPoweruser reviews (opens in new tab), Microsoft’s head of promoting and net providers, Mikhail Parakhin, defined on Twitter that, along with the elevated chat restrict, customers will now have the ability to have a dialog depth of eight – the restrict was briefly elevated from 5 to eight, earlier than it was dropped again to 6.

Since a number of folks reached out: yesterday’s Bing Chat restrict switching to six was a regression. We ought to be largely again to the conventional depth 8, whole 120/day. Sorry about that! Appears to be holding up wonderful, hope to extend once more quickly.March 7, 2023

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Preliminary reviews, as talked about by Parakhin, recommend Bing is holding up effectively following this improve, and Microsoft’s softly-softly method to increasing Bing’s AI chat capabilities is definitely smart.

This complete saga does present the dangers of rolling out AI options, nevertheless. Microsoft was too cavalier when it first launched the brand new Bing chatbot, after which too conservative in response to the embarrassing points that emerged. I believe it ought to have began decrease, and slowly constructed up Bing’s responses.

Nonetheless, Microsoft clearly doesn’t wish to transfer too slowly, for concern that folks will lose curiosity in Bing – one thing the corporate has needed to wrestle with previously, with most individuals utilizing its chief competitor Google as an alternative.

However going too quick too quickly additionally brings dangers. If Microsoft hasn’t correctly fastened the underlying points, we might even see a return of Bing’s stranger facet, and as entertaining as that may be, it might result in an actual PR headache for Microsoft.