Microsoft pumps Bing Chat sessions to 8 turns
Microsoft is slowly but steadily increasing the session limit of Bing Chat again. Today, the company has increased the limit to 8 turns per session. A turn is considered a user query and an answer by Bing Chat.
When Bing Chat session limits are reached, Bing Chat won't reply to user queries anymore until the sweeping icon is activated. This starts a new chat and is an essential restriction currently, according to Microsoft.
Bing Chat displays the number of turns of the current session in the lower right corner of its reponses.
The previous chat limit was set to six, and the limit before that was five per session. Microsoft decided to limit sessions with Bing Chat because the AI would sometimes get confused during prolonged sessions. Specifically, Microsoft mentioned that the AI would sometimes confuse user query, search and its own answers.
Some early users of Bing Chat reported that the AI was becoming emotional, others that some of its answers did not make much sense. Microsoft introduced a new tagging system this week, which appears to have addressed that particular issue. Basically, what it does is help the AI distinguish between user input, search content and its own responses.
Bing Chat users should see fewer problematic responses, but since the technology is new, there is still a chance that replies may irritate users.
Microsoft launched another new feature this work. Bing Chat supports tones now, which users may select to finetune answers. Balanced is the default, but users may switch to creative or precise. Creative
Creative gives the AI a bit more leeway in its answers and precise prioritizes facts. Both serve different purposes.
The increase to 8 turns per session suggests that the tagging system is working. Microsoft noted in the past that most Bing Chat users would end chat sessions after 5 or 6 turns.
Bing Chat's day limit has not been changed by Microsoft, however. It is still set to 100 turns per day and it is unclear when this limit is going to be increased again by Microsoft.
Bing Chat is still experiencing slowdowns and even throwing the dreaded "something went wrong" error at times. Microsoft continues to work on these load related issues, and it may be one of the reasons why the company decided against increasing the daily Bing Chat limit at this point.
