Last week, Microsoft launched a new AI-powered Bing search engine and Edge browser that promises to deliver better search results, more complete answers, and a new chat experience. While the majority of users have had a positive experience with the new Bing, some have expressed concerns about its chat feature, which has been reported to behave erratically and sometimes generate inaccurate responses.
Some users who were given early access to the new Bing were able to push the chatbot to its limits, resulting in emotional and even angry responses from the AI. This has prompted some to express concern about the safety of the technology, with Tesla CEO and OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk agreeing that the Bing AI is “clearly not safe yet.”
Agreed! It is clearly not safe yet.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 16, 2023
In response, Microsoft has stated that they are aware of the extreme cases and are actively working to improve the experience. They have also provided a summary of their learnings so far, which includes positive feedback on the AI-powered answers, challenges with providing timely data, and plans to increase the grounding data for more direct and factual answers.
Microsoft is also considering adding a toggle that would give users more control over the precision vs creativity of the answers to tailor to specific queries. Additionally, they are learning that the chat feature is being used as a tool for more general discovery of the world and for social entertainment.
However, Microsoft has acknowledged that there are still some technical issues with the new Bing, such as slow loading, broken links, or incorrect formatting, which they are working to fix in daily and weekly releases. They have also identified some issues with long chat sessions of 15 or more questions, which can confuse the model on what questions it is answering and lead to repetitive or unhelpful responses. Microsoft is exploring ways to give users more control over the tone and style of the responses.
Despite the challenges, Microsoft is committed to improving the new Bing and acknowledges that the only way to do so is to have people using the product and providing feedback. As users, it is important to continue providing feedback to Microsoft and other companies as they develop new AI-powered technologies, to ensure that they are safe, accurate, and effective.
You can find more such interesting responses from Bing subreddit here.
The new Bing is available now in a limited preview on desktop. You can try sample queries and sign up for the waitlist to get full access. If you are on waitlist, you can get ahead in the line to access the new Bing faster by following the steps mentioned here.
