Microsoft is ready to launch its new Bing chatbot into the mainstream less than a week after making major changes to keep the artificially intelligent search engine from crashing.
The company announced on Wednesday that the new AI technology would be available in its Bing smartphone app and the Edge internet browser app.
Microsoft hopes that giving smartphone users access to its new AI-powered search engine will give it an edge over Google, which is the leader in internet search but hasn’t made a chatbot public yet.
Reports of Bing’s strange behavior prompted Microsoft to look for a way to limit Bing’s propensity to respond to certain questions with strong emotional language. It accomplishes this primarily by limiting the length and duration of conversations with the chatbot, forcing users to restart the conversation after several turns. However, the improved Bing now politely declines questions that it would have answered just a week ago.
In the two weeks since Microsoft unveiled its revamped Bing, over a million users worldwide have tried out a public preview of the new product after signing up for a waitlist. According to Microsoft, most users responded positively, but others complained that Bing was insulting them, professing its love, or using another disturbing or bizarre language.
Microsoft Brings Chatbot To Phones
The new Bing uses some of the same technology as Microsoft partner OpenAI’s popular writing tool ChatGPT. It is part of a new class of AI systems that have learned human language and grammar by reading a huge amount of books and online writings. They can write songs, emails, and recipes on the spot, and they can sum up ideas in a few words using information they found on the internet. They are, however, prone to errors and unwieldy.
Reports of Bing’s strange behavior prompted Microsoft to look for a way to limit Bing’s propensity to respond to certain questions with strong emotional language. It accomplishes this primarily by limiting the length and duration of conversations with the chatbot, forcing users to restart the conversation after several turns. However, the improved Bing now politely declines questions that it would have answered just a week ago.
“I’m sorry, but I prefer not to continue this conversation,” it says when asked about how it works or the rules that govern it. “I’m still learning, so I appreciate your patience and understanding.”
Microsoft stated that its new technology would be integrated into its Skype messaging service as well.
SOURCE – (AP)
