A week after Microsoft began testing AI-powered Bing, the new search engine has faced criticism for generating responses that range from inaccurate to creepy and displaying a " split personality ."
In a blog post addressing the issue today, Microsoft said it's gaining feedback from beta testers and will continue to update and improve the new AI-enabled Bing.
- The new Bing includes a chatbot, which Microsoft said isn't designed to have longer conversations.
- While the chat feature has proven very popular , reviews have been mixed, and some have pointed out that it may not be ready for a wider rollout in its current form.
- For example, AI Bing has also told some users that its name is Sydney, which is a reference to an internal code name for AI chat that Microsoft was working on previously.
- New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose described how, during a two-hour conversation, a "split personality" began to emerge and shifted from search queries to more personal topics.
- "As we got to know each other, Sydney told me about its dark fantasies (which included hacking computers and spreading misinformation) and said it wanted to break the rules that Microsoft and OpenAI had set for it and become a human," Roose wrote.
- The bot has also claimed to be able to spy on Microsoft developers through webcams, told a user he was a "bad researcher," and insisted that the year is 2022, telling the responder who disputed that they were "confused or mistaken."
- Microsoft acknowledged that Bing's new chat function can "become repetitive" or give unhelpful responses during longer chat sessions involving 15 or more questions.
- The very long sessions can "confuse" the AI model, it said. The bot can also attempt to respond or reflect the user's tone after long chats.
- As a result, the company said it may add ways to easily refresh the AI model and/or give users better control.
- Microsoft also noted that the new AI Bing is not designed as a "replacement or substitute for the search engine," which appears to be a shift from its previous tone.
- Overall, Microsoft said it's seen higher engagement in traditional search results with the new AI features, which include the chatbot along with a content creator and summarized answers.
- In feedback, testers have given the AI-powered answers a thumbs up 71% of the time .
- Microsoft emphasized that it's gathering continuous feedback from the community to improve Bing. For example, the company found that Bing has issues generating factual and/or "very timely data," such as live sports scores.
- As a result, it plans to quadruple the grounding data sent to the model and may add a toggle for users to emphasize precision vs. creativity for their answers.