Microsoft launches idiosyncratic Bing chatbot on smartphones
Microsoft is ready to mainstream its new Bing chatbot less than a week after making major fixes to keep the artificially intelligent search engine from going haywire.
The company announced on Wednesday that it is bringing the new AI technology to its Bing smartphone app, as well as the app for its Edge internet browser.
Putting the new AI-powered search engine in the hands of smartphone users is said to give Microsoft an edge over Google, which dominates the internet search business but has yet to release such a chatbot to the public.
In the two weeks since Microsoft unveiled its revamped Bing, more than a million users around the world have experimented with a public preview of the new product after signing up for a waitlist to try it out. Microsoft said most of these users responded positively, but others found Bing insulting them, professing love, or using other disturbing or bizarre language.
Powered by some of the same technologies behind the popular writing tool ChatGPT, developed by Microsoft partner OpenAI, the new Bing is part of an emerging class of AI systems that have mastered human language and grammar after studying a vast treasure trove of books and have included online writings. You can compose songs, recipes and emails on command, or succinctly summarize concepts using information from the web. But they are also error-prone and unwieldy.
Reports of Bing’s odd behavior led Microsoft to look for a way to limit Bing’s tendency to use highly emotional language in response to certain questions. This is most often done by limiting the length and time of conversations with the chatbot, forcing users to start a new chat after several rounds. But the updated Bing now politely declines questions it would have answered just a week ago.
“I’m sorry, but I prefer not to continue this conversation,” it says when asked technical questions about how it works or what rules guide it. “I’m still learning, so I appreciate your understanding and patience.”
Microsoft said its new technology will also be integrated into its messaging service Skype.
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