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Posts tagged "Bing"

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Get ready to take your Bing AI chat from the desktop to mobile, without starting over
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Microsoft is working on yet another sizable update to Bing AI with this round going to mobile. The latest batch comes just weeks after a previous announcement of various desktop improvements and we have a lot to cover.

Starting off with the Bing app itself, users will be able to add a Bing Chat widget to their “iOS or Android home screen”. This gives you direct access to the AI with the option to either type in your query into the text window or select the microphone icon to ask the question verbally. You can start fresh with a new chat or continue with an old one as Microsoft is enabling the frequently requested “continuous conversations across platforms”. So now a conversation held with Bing on the desktop can continue on mobile devices and vice versa.

The last Bing app update sees the AI gaining new support for multiple countries and languages, which opens it up to more people around the world. Unfortunately, a list of all the newfound support was not included in the post (although we did ask). Microsoft also claims it “improved the quality for non-English chats.” However, the company didn’t provide any details on the level of improvement. 

Expanding support

Moving on to the second app, SwiftKey will have a Compose feature to help you write texts “according to the parameters you suggest”. These parameters include the subject matter, tone, length, and format with the final one being useful for drafting emails. Of course, you can edit those drafts. Two new tones are being added to SwiftKey as well – Witty and Funny – bringing the total to six. So, if you want to have Bing create some eye-rolling dad jokes, you can (just be sure you use this power wisely). To top it all off, the AI-powered Translator on Android will be migrating over to iOS “within the next week” or so.

The Edge browser app is getting Contextual Chat allowing users to ask Bing a question based on the content they’re viewing. The example given is you can ask the AI what the best wine would be to pair with a recipe you're looking at or have it write up a summary of an article you're looking at. Learning will also be made a bit easier thanks to Selected Text Actions. Highlighting a piece of text will open a conversation with Bing where it will then explain that topic in detail complete with “cited sources”.

And last but not least, every single group chat in Skype will have access to the generative AI. All you have to do is tag it by entering “@Bing” into a discussion. 

Bing AI update on mobile apps

(Image credit: Windows)

Availability

The release dates of all these features are all over the place which is why it wasn’t mentioned earlier. The Skype update, SwiftKey Compose tool, and the Bing widget are releasing this week (week of May 14, 2023). Next week, we’ll see continuous conversations alongside the Translator tool. Everything else is unknown other than a vague “soon”. 

We asked Microsoft if it could provide us with dates for the unmentioned features plus a list of the newly supported countries and languages. This story will be updated at a later time.

While we have you check out TechRadar’s list of the best AI tools for 2023 to see what the technology is capable of. It’s not just assistants or content generators.

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Microsoft makes it much easier to use ChatGPT-powered Bing – with a catch
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Microsoft’s Bing chatbot is now available to use without signing into a Microsoft account, you’ll doubtless be pleased to hear.

This means that anyone can now jump on and start quizzing the ChatGPT-powered AI on whatever topic is on their mind, but there’s a caveat.

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Windows Central spotted the tweet from Michael Schechter, VP of Search Growth and Distribution (Bing) at Microsoft, announcing that the Bing AI now offers unauthenticated chat access.

However, while you won’t have to sign in to use the AI, you’ll be limited to pretty short conversations – just five queries in a session. Those signed in get 20 queries per conversation.

In other Bing AI news, a further step forward for the chatbot is the addition of a share button and more export options, as well as an improved copy and paste experience, useful little touches (as Neowin flagged up).

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Analysis: Bringing Bing to everyone faster

Remember when Bing AI was first launched? The chatbot got caught up in all sorts of controversial weirdness as a result of going off the rails in long chat sessions, leading Microsoft to impose strict limits on session length to tackle that particular problem.

That limit was five queries per session – exactly what unauthenticated users are getting now. In other words, it’s the bare minimum. (Well, clearly it’s the bare minimum – any lower than five would leave little or no opportunity to explore any topic further).

Still, the absolute minimum is very much better than nothing, so we’re glad to see Microsoft take this route. It makes for a convenient way for those who haven’t tried out the Bing AI yet to do so, and of course, that should mean extra traffic for Microsoft, too.

Doubtless Microsoft hopes that by giving folks a taster of Bing, it’ll impress them enough to sign in for the full lengthier chat experience.

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Chatbot or adbot? Microsoft could bring adverts to ChatGPT-powered Bing AI
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Don’t look now, but Microsoft is exploring the idea of pushing adverts with its Bing AI chatbot.

The ChatGPT-powered AI hasn’t been around for long, but has already achieved a measure of success driving more traffic to the Bing search engine, which is one of Microsoft’s main aims with the chatbot, naturally.

However, another target Microsoft is now sighting up is the addition of advertising to monetize the chatbot in a more concrete way, as evidenced by a freshly written post on the Bing blog site.

The content makes for worrying reading – though it’s a predictable avenue for Microsoft to assess, and we should note that this is very much early days still. The blog post talks about “exploring” the use of ads and that it’s mulling over “some early ideas,” so we shouldn’t get too carried away at this point.

The ideas Microsoft is toying with include making it so that if the user hovers over a link, it’ll pop up a panel containing further links to a publisher’s content. And also placing a “rich caption of Microsoft Start licensed content” next to a chat answer, meaning driving traffic to these Microsoft Start partners (and sharing ad revenue with that partner).

Microsoft further states: “We’re also exploring placing ads in the chat experience to share the ad revenue with partners whose content contributed to the chat response.”

Analysis: A case of greed before need?

Oh dear, oh dear. And another oh dear for good measure. Microsoft seems to be losing sight of the purpose of its ChatGPT-fueled AI here. It’s supposed to be a useful tool, a smart addition to Bing to let people search in a new way, and do a whole lot more to help them besides, with a bunch of other tricks up its sleeve (from knocking up artwork or poetry, to providing swift aid to gamers, kind of).

So, Bing AI is all about helping folks, right? Well, nobody believes Microsoft is doing this out of the goodness of its own heart. Of course there’s an agenda, and that’s to push Bing search to compete better with the highly dominant Google. Fair enough: Bing needs some kind of secret weapon, you can’t argue with that, and finally, it looks like the AI chatbot might be the answer.

Google is even worried, having rushed its rival AI, Bard, onto the stage, fumbling its lines in the process (and not getting nearly the same amount of attention as Bing AI, which is already well underway with updates being applied regularly by Microsoft).

But a measure of early success appears to have left Microsoft with dollar signs flashing before its eyes, perhaps blinding it to Bing’s original purpose. So now, we have Microsoft thinking about getting greedy (there’s evidence of this with the company’s attitude elsewhere regarding the AI, too). Bing traffic isn’t enough in the way of monetization, perhaps, so why not do adverts, too?

We’ll tell you why not – because people are tired of you trying to jam adverts into everything, Microsoft. Like your online services, or the Windows 11 interface, over and over, with the latest example coming earlier this week in the form of (veiled) ads for the Start menu. And now the Bing chatbot?

We’re not surprised, really, but we are getting fed up with the condition Microsoft seems to suffer from, the main symptom of which is a sickening and relentless compulsion to cram in adverts with its products and services. Let’s call it ‘ad nauseum’, and let’s further hope a cure can be found.

Via Neowin

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Microsoft’s ChatGPT-powered Bing AI gets smarter with more local knowledge
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Microsoft’s Bing AI just got some more improvements, including one that should make the chatbot considerably more helpful when it comes to providing tailored recommendations based on your local area.

In a blog post introducing the latest changes, Microsoft acknowledged that it had received feedback telling the company that the ChatGPT-powered Bing needed to do better with local-related queries.

In other words, specific requests such as asking for the whereabouts of a store in your neighborhood, for example.

Microsoft informs us that it has bolstered Bing’s chops in this regard, so it’ll deliver “better answers if you’re trying to find a park, a store, or a doctor’s office near you.”

Other tweaks Microsoft recently applied to its Bing chatbot include increasing the limit of the max turns you can take (queries) in a single conversation from 15 to 20. Based on the allowance of 10 daily sessions, that gives you a limit of 200 turns per day in total.

Image and video search capabilities are also integrated in the chatbot now. These will pop up as answer cards, allowing the user to click ‘see more’ to dive into further detail with a Bing image search.

Analysis: Pushing forward and besting Bard

Obviously beefing up the performance of the Bing AI to do better with local queries is an important move to make. It’s no good having an all-singing and dancing AI (you have asked the chatbot to sing to you already, right?) if it falls down embarrassingly when it comes to making basic recommendations about locations and services near you.

Mind you, the enhanced performance for these kind of queries sounds like it’s in the early stages of getting a good coat of polish. As Microsoft puts it: “Expect us to make further improvements in local grounding based on your feedback.”

Like everything with Microsoft’s ChatGPT-powered AI, then, it’s very much a work in progress. Still, the amount of progress being made is impressively sure and steady, which has got to be a worry for Google.

Google’s rival AI, Bard, has been notably slow off the starting blocks. Indeed, it feels like Google forced Bard onto the starting blocks before it had even laced its trainers, because the firm felt like the new Bing couldn’t be left unanswered, seeing as the ChatGPT-powered AI is already boosting traffic to Microsoft’s search engine.

We’re told that Bard will become more capable, and will receive improvements to its reasoning skills later this week, and it’s clear enough that Google recognizes it needs to move faster with its rival AI. At the same time, it can’t afford any missteps as seen with Bard’s launch (and to be fair, with the Bing AI’s launch too, although Microsoft seems to have recovered pretty well from the mishaps Bing encountered early on).

Our main worry about Microsoft is that the success of the Bing chatbot – so far – could go to the company’s head. There’s already worrying talk of jamming adverts into Bing AI, which we very much hope won’t happen. That’s probably a forlorn hope, and if it turns out that way, this could be an area that Bard could turn to its advantage. That said, it’s not like Google won’t be surveying every avenue of monetization down the line, too – it’d be pretty naïve to think otherwise.

Both companies would do well to remember that these AIs must be perceived as helpful friends, though, and not ones with a hidden agenda. Or, more to the point we suppose, a poorly hidden agenda which becomes painfully transparent…

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Everyone can now use the ChatGPT-powered Bing – here’s how
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Since the new ChatGPT-powered Bing landed last month Microsoft has been steadily working through the waitlist for its new AI-powered search engine – but it seems most of us need to wait no more.

As spotted by Windows Central, it's now possible to skip the tiresome waitlist and start firing questions at the AI search engine, even though Microsoft hasn't officially removed the waitlist. We've also tried this with success, but it seems to require a particular trick.

A Microsoft account that we previously added to the Bing waitlist is still waiting for access. But when we set up a new Microsoft account on the new Bing homepage, we got straight in – so that appears to be the most reliable method for anyone who's still waiting to dabble with a search engine that runs on OpenAI's new GPT-4 model.

Multiple sites, including The Verge , have also reported successfully accessing Bing after previously being on the waitlist. There have also been examples of outliers where simply signing in on the Bing homepage hasn't worked, which suggests this isn't yet an official Microsoft roll-out.

We've asked Microsoft for comment and will update this story when we hear back. It's possible that the tech giant will reveal more during this afternoon's AI-themed 'Reinventing Productivity' event, which kicks off at 8am PT / 3pm GMT  (which works out as 2am AEDT).

But until then, it's worth heading to the new Bing and signing in to see if you now have access. If not, opening a new account in the meantime should give you access to Microsoft's ChatGPT-powered search engine, which has already attracted 100 million daily users.

Fellowship of the Bing

A laptop screen on a blue background showing the new Microsoft Bing and Google Bard AI chatbots

(Image credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft's announcement that its new Bing search engine is running on OpenAI's new GPT-4 language model has again raised its profile – particularly as GPT-4 tech is currently only available on ChatGPT to paying subscribers.

Still, there are big differences between Bing and ChatGPT. Microsoft's search engine is generally better at answering queries about recent events since, unlike ChatGPT, it's plugged into the internet. But Microsoft has also added guard-rails around the new Bing, which means ChatGPT could be better for creative brainstorming.

Both AI assistants have their place, and Bing continues to steal the limelight from Google Bard, which is Google's rival chatbot. Bard, which Google describes as an “experimental conversational AI service”, still hasn't been launched to the public, and has been mired in confusion, errors and delays.

Google did preview the AI tools coming to Gmail, Google Docs and more, and we're expecting to hear more about its chatbot plans in the run-up to Google I/O 2023. Until then, Microsoft Bing will continue to stretch its lead in AI search engine assistant space – particularly if the waitlist is officially removed soon.

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Sick of hearing about ChatGPT in Bing? Too bad: Microsoft is just getting started
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On Thursday, March 16, Microsoft is planning to reveal more of its grand scheme for implementing AI chatbot ChatGPT’s features into yet more aspects of our lives – specifically, how the tech firm has big plans to “reinvent productivity with AI”.

Besides being utterly meaningly corporate marketing jargon, this notion of ‘reinventing productivity’ is concerning at best, especially since we don’t know what it actually entails yet. Speculation is rife that Microsoft plans to integrate ChatGPT into the Microsoft 365 (formerly Office) software suite, along with the Dynamics 365 suite for enterprise use.

This comes hot on the heels of Microsoft shoving the chatbot into almost everything it owns. Starting out with the integration of ChatGPT into Bing and following rapidly with AI-powered additions to Skype and the Windows 11 taskbar, Microsoft has been going hard when it comes to AI in its software.

We had already speculated about the ways in which ChatGPT could transform Microsoft’s consumer software suite, so it’s not like this is a huge surprise. However, I’m worried about the whole prospect; Microsoft is rushing into its AI implementation plan, and it’s going to cause more problems than it solves.

The AI arms race

Microsoft’s apparent desire to shoehorn AI features into yet more of its products is likely a response to competitor Salesforce’s own moves in partnering up with ChatGPT creator OpenAI to bring the chatbot to Slack (as well as Snapchat introducing its own AI chatbot) This sort of reactionary decisionmaking is rarely a wise move, especially when it involves AI.

ChatGPT has already proven itself to be, well, problematic. Whether it’s being used to commit cybercrime or create spurious photography competition entries, AI poses some very serious risks. Many of these problems are caused by human abuse of AI software, but tools like ChatGPT have their own failings too.

We’re witnessing a real-time arms race to cram AI tech into every aspect of our lives, and I wouldn’t trust Microsoft (or any huge tech company, like Google or Meta) to be the harbingers of this chatbot renaissance. Right now, Microsoft is demonstrating a lack of caution when it comes to ChatGPT and AI in general, especially since it’s a space yet to see serious regulation from major governments.

I will admit that AI coming to the 365 suite is actually a much less horrible idea than, say, letting ChatGPT make video content. The ability to ask ChatGPT something simple like ‘add some animations to my PowerPoint presentation’ or ‘reformat this text document as a letter’ is both useful and relatively non-threatening – though the potential for Microsoft Word to simply write content for you is a bit concerning, especially for the academic space.

I’m not saying that ChatGPT being added to these tools is going to ruin our lives, but it has issues – and I’m definitely not convinced that Microsoft is taking all the right precautions here. This is a situation where caution will be rewarded; Google isn’t letting people get up close and personal with its new AI just yet, and Microsoft themselves had to limit the Bing chatbots replies after a whole load of weirdness from the AI. Charging ahead with more AI tools right now? Not a good look.

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Microsoft’s ChatGPT-powered Bing gets a personality makeover you may not like
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Microsoft has applied some further fine-tuning to its Bing AI, upping some chat limits and making changes to one of the chatbot’s personalities.

Chats have now been extended to allow up to 15 sessions per day, with the maximum length of a session pushed out to 10 queries (meaning a total of 150 queries is now your daily limit).

Microsoft has slowly but surely been pushing up those chat limits since the AI first launched and it was heavily restricted (to 5 sessions and 50 queries daily) when the chatbot’s behavior was observed going seriously awry in longer sessions.

But the more interesting change, as revealed by Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate VP & Consumer Chief Marketing Officer at Microsoft, is optimizing the ‘Balanced’ personality for better performance.

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As you may be aware, there are three personalities available for Microsoft’s AI. Balanced is the middle setting for the chatbot, a halfway house between Precise and Creative, which remain unchanged.

Precise offers more concise and business-like answers, more akin to a standard search, whereas Creative gives the AI more free rein in its replies – with Balanced lying in-between the two as a compromise option.

Analysis: Precise, A Bit Less Precise, and Creative?

As with any compromise, deciding exactly where to draw the line can be a tricky affair. However, it seems that Microsoft is shifting that line to a more conservative position with this latest change.

With Balanced now giving “shorter, quicker responses,” that sounds clearly more in line with the Precise setting, rather than Creative which is where the AI is allowed more freedom to ramble – and frankly, to be more interesting and human-like.

Therefore, moving the Balanced dial more towards the conservative end of the spectrum could be viewed as making the Bing AI a bit more straightlaced and, well, boring.

The whole point of having the three personalities is to give users the choice of how the AI will respond, so if they’re not happy with their interactions with the ChatGPT-powered entity, they can switch things around. But now it feels like there’s slightly less choice in terms of there being a ‘very conservative’ setting, a ‘somewhat conservative’ option, and a ‘freer rein’ choice.

Why has Microsoft moved in this direction? Our guess is that folks who want a more human-like chat experience are using Creative and maybe wouldn’t dream of dipping a toe into Balanced anyway. Perhaps few people are using Balanced overall, so tuning it towards Precise may tempt those on the latter into making use of the middling option – whereas those on Creative are going to stick there, most likely, as they want the AI to be as interesting and open as is inhumanly (ahem) possible.

Whatever the case, we can expect further tuning, and indeed likely other personality choices, down the line. We may even get a mode whereby the Bing AI can impersonate famous celebrities, too, if leaks are on the money. And that would likely help push user numbers even higher, when there are already a good few folks signed up to test drive the chatbot.

Via MS Power User

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ChatGPT-fueled Bing now has 100 million users – but will they stick around?
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Microsoft tells us that its Bing search engine has hit new highs, now boasting 100 million daily active users.

The news came via a post on the Microsoft Bing blog site observing the difference that the ChatGPT-powered AI has made to Bing traffic in its first month of existence, pushing numbers up over 100 million for the first time ever.

The company notes that there are over a million users of the new Bing AI (in preview), and that this helped boost the figures of the search engine to realize the fresh milestone.

Microsoft then goes on to say that a third of the “millions of active users” of the Bing AI are new to Bing, which shows that the chatbot is driving folks to the search engine, although there seems to be an element of confusion here.

Is it a ‘million plus’ users of the AI, or ‘millions’? While technically those aren’t contradictory statements, we don’t see why Microsoft didn’t just call it ‘millions’ in both cases as that clearly sounds like more. Like a couple of million, or a few, even? Insert shoulder shrug here.

At any rate, Microsoft also acknowledged the obvious truth that Bing is still a long old way off the pace compared to Google: “This [100 million] is a surprisingly notable figure, and yet we are fully aware we remain a small, low, single digit share player. That said, it feels good to be at the dance!”

Analysis: Can this growth be sustained?

Let’s face it: Bing AI isn’t just a chatbot. It’s a vehicle to help Bing challenge Google, and one that Microsoft hopes will be swiftly moving up through the gears to gain momentum.

This isn’t just about pushing for market share with the Bing search engine either, it’s also a line of attack for the Edge browser, as we’ve already seen with the taskbar implementation of the Bing AI in Windows 11: an icon that linked through to the Bing page, opening it up in Edge.

(Note that after the disappointment around this, and the way Microsoft made it seem like the AI was integrated into the taskbar, rather than just being a link, the Bing icon has vanished from the search box for now, though we’re told it will be returning periodically).

Anyway, we can see that Microsoft’s plan is working thus far, with the Bing AI preview successfully recruiting regular users to add to the ranks of Bing searchers – and a good dollop of them – but will this state of affairs last?

A laptop screen showing the new ChatGPT-powered Bing search engine

(Image credit: Microsoft)

We’re doubtful. You see, the Bing chatbot is all shiny, new, and still very much an object of curiosity right now. It had a serious pull to begin with, as you’d expect from new tech, and that interest has been carried through with measures like the recent introduction of a trio of personalities to experiment with, as well as various limits Microsoft had previously imposed on chats being lifted.

And doubtless there’s still entertainment to be had prodding the AI, trying to engage with it using different angles – humor inevitably being one of them – and generally messing with the chatbot. That won’t last, though.

Don’t get us wrong, there will be serious users of the Bing bot out there, of course, but we’d imagine a sizeable chunk of the early attraction comes from the curious or mischievous.

And in that respect, initial figures are not really a yardstick of how much impact the ‘new Bing’ as Microsoft calls it will make. If growth is sustained, and the AI is meaningfully honed and improved over the next few months, we can come back and talk about a new wave of adoption for Bing.

Until then, we remain skeptical, and our overall feeling is that Microsoft has opened the doors too early on this one. We’re not sure the AI is going to be well tuned enough to seriously impress in the way it should for some time yet, but it’s easy to see why Microsoft was keen to launch. It needs all the weaponry it can muster in the battle against Google (and Chrome for that matter), and the latter company is forging ahead with its own AI tech (Bard).

Via MS Power User

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DuckDuckGo’s new DuckAssist may give Bing and ChatGPT a run for their money
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DuckDuckGo is the latest search engine getting on the generative AI train. It recently launch the beta of its new summarization tool known as DuckAssist, which utilizes “natural language technology” from both OpenAI and AI research company Anthropic.

Though similar to Bing, DuckAssist is not quite like ChatGPT. Instead of utilizing multiple sources to create the summaries, the tool uses primarily just one: Wikipedia. DuckDuckGo specifically chose Wikipedia “because it’s a public resource with a transparent editorial process that cites all the sources used in an article”. The company also points out that since the platform is frequently updated, DuckAssist will always deliver up-to-date information – at most, a few weeks old. Occasionally, the tool will pull from other platforms like Encyclopedia Britannica. However, Wikipedia will be the main one.

Using a single source for information brings with it multiple benefits, according to DuckDuckGo, like being able to generate answers for a vast number of queries quickly. Additionally, only pulling from Wikipedia and its sources reduces the rate of hallucinations – a problem generative AIs have where the tech will just make something up unrelated to the search query.

Work in progress

The way DuckAssist works is pretty simple. All you have to do is ask DuckDuckGo a question, and it’ll immediately write up a summary, complete with the sourced Wikipedia article at the bottom. It’ll even point to the specific section of said article where the original information can be found. 

The announcement post gives some suggestions on how to get the most out of DuckAssist. For example, “phrasing your search query as a question [or] adding the word ‘wiki’” increases the chances the summary will appear.

Since the tool is in beta, it’s not perfect. DuckDuckGo admits DuckAssist will not get it right 100 percent of the time. It may omit key information, give the wrong information, cite the wrong source, or all three at once – especially if it’s a particularly complex question. Also, not every query will be given an answer such as asking about recent global events. 

Because of these issues, DuckDuckGo is asking users to provide suggestions on DuckAssist and how it can improve the tool. Next to the summaries will be an anonymous feedback link where you can send feedback.

Availability

The tool is currently available on DuckDuckGo’s mobile apps and browser extensions, although not everyone will get to try it out. For those who can, it’s free and totally private. None of the queries will be used to train any AI models nor will OpenAI, Anthropic, or any third-party have access to that information. DuckAssist will roll out to all users within the coming weeks assuming everything goes well with the beta. 

It’s worth mentioning this is the first of a series of AI-assisted features that DuckDuckGo is working on. Not much else is known beyond that, but It'll be interesting to see what the developers come up with. 

If any of this sounds familiar to you, that’s because Brave launched something very similar on its own web browser. Be sure to check out our coverage of Brave’s Summarizer feature. 

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Microsoft lets ChatGPT-powered Bing off its leash – I just hope it doesn’t backfire
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Microsoft has boosted its Bing search engine, to which it recently added artificial intelligence-powered chat capabilities, by increasing the number of chats it can have with a user in a day from 100 to 120.

When Microsoft first introduced Bing’s new feature, which is based on the popular ChatGPT chatbot, there was a lot of initial excitement… but then Bing started behaving strangely. People noticed that Bing’s AI chatbot would start acting increasingly bizarrely the longer their conversations with it went on.

This included Bing giving out incorrect information, and then having what can only be described as a tantrum when its errors were pointed out, which led to Microsoft hastily limiting the amount of responses Bing could give within a chat in a bid to curtail those worrying conversations.

It worked, but it came at a cost, as Bing suddenly became a lot more boring.

Fixing the chat

The last thing Microsoft wants is for Bing to be considered boring again, so it’s been understandably keen to increase the chat limit once the bugs have been ironed out, so the news that it is offering a big increase to 120, which follows an increase from 60 to 100, is certainly welcome.

Also, Microsoft’s initial limit to just five replies was seen by many to be too drastic – it certainly limited the usefulness of Bing by cutting chats short – and it took the fun out of it as well.

As MSPoweruser reports, Microsoft’s head of advertising and web services, Mikhail Parakhin, explained on Twitter that, in addition to the increased chat limit, users will now be able to have a conversation depth of eight – the limit was briefly increased from five to eight, before it was dropped back to six.

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Initial reports, as mentioned by Parakhin, suggest Bing is holding up well following this increase, and Microsoft’s softly-softly approach to expanding Bing’s AI chat capabilities is certainly sensible.

This whole saga does show the risks of rolling out AI features, however. Microsoft was too cavalier when it first introduced the new Bing chatbot, and then too conservative in response to the embarrassing issues that emerged. I think it should have started lower, and slowly built up Bing’s responses.

However, Microsoft clearly doesn’t want to move too slowly, for fear that people will lose interest in Bing – something the company has had to struggle with in the past, with most people using its chief competitor Google instead.

But going too fast too soon also brings risks. If Microsoft hasn’t properly fixed the underlying issues, we may see a return of Bing’s stranger side, and as entertaining as that can be, it could lead to a real PR headache for Microsoft.

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