Microsoft’s Bing chatbot offers responses in three different shades as it seeks to address some criticism of the service.
The search engine chatbot, powered by the same technology behind ChatGPT, will now provide users with options for three types of response: creative (“create surprise and entertainment”), balanced (“reasonable and consistent”), or accurate (” concise, prioritizing precision”).
The new Bing is rolling out gradually, but it drew wild responses to some interactions shortly after launching last month, including declaring his love for a journalist from the New York Times. This led Microsoft to add some restrictions, which resulted in the Bing chatbot refusing to answer some queries.
Microsoft’s head of web services, Mikhail Parakhin, said the updated Bing should now lead to fewer bounces and “hallucinations” or false responses. Referring to the tone choices, Parakhin said that he preferred the “creative” tone, while “accurate” was “much more factual”.
Now almost everyone, 90%, should see the Bing chat mode switcher (the triple switch). I definitely prefer Creative, but Precise is also interesting, it’s much more factual. See which one you like. The 10% that are still in the control group should start seeing it today.
— Mikhail Parakhin (@MParakhin) March 1, 2023
Google’s rival to ChatGPT, Bard, has yet to go public, but its launch was marred by an embarrassing bug when a video demo of the chatbot showed it was making an incorrect statement about the James Webb Space Telescope.
The Guardian asked the same question to the Bing chatbot (Bing is better than Bard) in all three different tones. Under “creative,” the response noted that Bard has been criticized for making factual errors, while extolling Bing’s ability to personalize search queries and use up-to-date information from the web.
After several paragraphs, he ended on a balanced note, stating, “Both Bing and Bard have their strengths and weaknesses, and are still evolving and improving over time. You may want to try them yourself and see which one suits you best.” However, Bard is not yet publicly available.
The “balanced” answer is short, made up of four sentences including: “Both chatbots have advantages and disadvantages, such as accuracy, speed, relevance, and bias. It depends on your preferences and needs which one seems best to you.😊”
Under “accurate”, the bing chatbot asked for more details after being asked the same question, which was refined by The Guardian to “is the bing chatbot better than the bard Google chatbot”. The five-sentence answer echoes the balanced answer, which states: “As to whether Bing’s chatbot is better than Google’s Bard chatbot, it really depends on personal preference and what you’re looking for in a chatbot.” .
