Microsoft was quick to limit Bing’s AI chats to prevent disruptive responses, but it’s changing tack just days later. The company now says it will restore longer chats, and is starting to expand chats to six shifts per session (up from five) and 60 chats per day (up from 50). The daily limit will go up to 100 chats soon, Microsoft says, and regular searches will no longer count against that total. That said, don’t expect to wreak much havoc when long chats return: Microsoft wants to bring them back “responsibly.”
The tech giant is also addressing concerns that Bing’s AI may be too verbose with responses. A forthcoming test will allow you to choose a tone that is “precise” (meaning shorter, more direct responses), “creative” (longer), or “balanced.” If you’re just interested in the facts, you won’t have to read as much text to get them.
There may have been signs of trouble considerably earlier. As windows center gradesresearcher Dr. Gary Marcus and Nomic VP Ben Schmidt discovered that public testing of the Bing chatbot (codenamed “Sidney”) in India four months ago produced equally strange results in long sessions. We’ve asked Microsoft for feedback, but it says in its most recent blog post that the current preview is meant to catch “outlier use cases” that don’t manifest with internal testing.
Microsoft previously said it didn’t fully anticipate people using Bing AI’s longer chats for entertainment. The looser limits are an attempt to strike a balance between “feedback” in favor of those chats, as the company says, with security measures that prevent the bot from going in strange directions.
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