Microsoft is putting a leash on its AI-powered Bing by preventing users from engaging in long conversations with the chatbot.
On Friday afternoon, the company announced that “the chat experience will be capped at 50 chat turns per day and 5 chat turns per session. A turn is a conversation exchange which contains both a user question and a reply from Bing."
The new restrictions are already in place. “Thanks for this conversation! I've reached my limit, will you hit 'New topic,' please?” Bing told us after we tried to ask the chatbot a sixth question. The program also refused to talk about the Microsoft-imposed chat restrictions.
Microsoft announced the restrictions following a week of headlines about how the ChatGPT-powered Bing can be pushed to give a wide range of emotional responses, including displaying hostile, manipulative behavior or even declaring its love and sentience.
According to Microsoft, the restrictions will “help focus the chat sessions,” a day after the company said long conversations with the new Bing (more than 15 questions) can “confuse” the program’s computing model and produce uneven responses.
The restriction will seriously alter Bing’s capacity to hold human-like conversations. It'll also hurt the new Bing's potential to rival Google when the queries are capped to 50 per day. However, Microsoft says the limitation won’t undermine the AI program’s usefulness.
“Our data has shown that the vast majority of people find the answers they’re looking for within 5 turns and that only ~1% of chat conversations have 50+ messages,” the company said. However, Microsoft is indicating the restriction will only be temporary. “As we continue to get feedback, we will explore expanding the caps on chat sessions,” it said.
The company says it plans on rolling out the AI Bing to millions of more users in the coming weeks; it's currently in an invite-only preview mode. However, the recent headlines about the technology have sparked concerns that the AI-powered Bing may not be ready for primetime.
In the meantime, Microsoft says users with access to the new Bing can expect the chatbot to start a new topic after a chat session completes five turns. “At the end of each chat session, context needs to be cleared so the model won’t get confused. Just click on the broom icon to the left of the search box for a fresh start,” the company added.