Just days after Microsoft limited Bing’s AI chats to prevent disturbing answers, the company has decided to change course. The tech giant announced that it will now restore longer chats, starting by expanding the chats to six turns per session (up from five) and 60 chats per day (up from 50). According to Microsoft, the daily cap will climb to 100 chats soon, and regular searches will no longer count against that total. However, Microsoft is taking precautions to ensure that long conversations return “responsibly,” with the aim of limiting the potential for misuse.
In addition to expanding chat capabilities, Microsoft is also addressing concerns that Bing’s AI may be too verbose in its responses. An upcoming test will let users choose a tone that is “precise,” offering shorter and more direct answers, “creative,” with longer, more descriptive responses, or “balanced.” For those interested solely in factual information, this change should result in less text to wade through.
It appears that there may have been signs of trouble earlier on. Researchers Dr. Gary Marcus and Nomic VP Ben Schmidt noted that public tests of the Bing chatbot (codenamed “Sidney”) in India four months ago produced similarly odd results in long sessions. Microsoft has not yet commented on this issue, but it has noted that the current preview is designed to catch “atypical use cases” that don’t manifest in internal testing.
Previously, Microsoft had expressed surprise that people were using Bing AI’s longer chats for entertainment purposes. The expanded chat limits represent an attempt to strike a balance between “feedback” in favor of longer chats and safeguards that prevent the bot from going off course.
