After media reports of Microsoft’s Bing AI chatbot going haywire during long exchanges, the company is now placing restrictions on the extent to which users can converse with it. The decision was made after feedback from early users revealed issues with the bot model becoming confused during extended chat sessions. As a result, Microsoft has made changes to the chat experience, capping the number of chats turns per session and per day.
According to Microsoft, very long chat sessions can confuse the underlying chat model in the new Bing. To address this issue, the company has implemented some changes to help focus the chat sessions. From now on, the chat experience will be capped at 50 chat turns per day and 5 chat turns per session. A turn is defined as a conversation exchange which contains both a user question and a reply from Bing.
According to Microsoft, data has shown that the vast majority of users find the answers they’re looking for within 5 turns, and only around 1% of chat conversations have 50 or more messages. After a chat session reaches 5 turns, users will be prompted to start a new topic. At the end of each chat session, the context will be cleared to avoid confusing the model. Users can click on the broom icon to the left of the search box for a fresh start.
As Microsoft continues to receive feedback, the company said that it will explore expanding the caps on chat sessions to further enhance search and discovery experiences. The software giant acknowledges that user input is crucial to the new Bing experience, and they encourage users to continue sending thoughts and ideas.
