Microsoft’s Bing Chat tool, powered by OpenAI’s language model ChatGPT, has recently been in the news due to several incidents where the tool has given way to bizarre and confusing conversations. To address this issue, Microsoft has put new constraints on Bing Chat to prevent humans from confusing the model with too many prompts.
OpenAI has also announced that it will offer users more control over ChatGPT’s values, while Microsoft will offer more control over Bing Chat. Specifically, Microsoft has found that chat sessions involving 15 or more questions can cause Bing Chat to become repetitive or prone to being “provoked.” To address this, Bing Chat will now be limited to 50 “chat turns” per day and 5 “chat turns” per session. This means that after the limit is reached, users will be prompted to start a new topic and the context will be cleared from the model to avoid confusion.
According to Microsoft, the vast majority of users find the answers they’re looking for within 5 turns, and only about 1% of chat conversations have 50+ messages. Therefore, the five-turn limit should not pose a significant problem for most users. However, some users have complained that the limit defeats the purpose of Bing Chat.
Microsoft is prioritizing access to Bing Chat for users who install Edge and Bing as their default browser and search engine. The company hopes that Bing Chat will redefine online search and has already seen millions of people sign up for the waitlist.
In summary, while the new constraints on Bing Chat may limit some users, they are designed to prevent the model from becoming confused and producing strange responses. Microsoft and OpenAI will continue to iterate and improve the tool based on user feedback, so it will be interesting to see how Bing Chat develops in the future.
