Microsoft Expands Bing Chat Service, Despite Initial Criticism

According to Yusuf Mehdi, the Chief Marketing Officer for Microsoft's consumer division, the company has once again increased the turn limit for its Bing Chat service, raising it to a total of 120 daily turns with a maximum of 10 turns per session. This adjustment follows some negative feedback and unpredictable responses resulting from the initial high turn limits during Bing Chat's public debut. This marks the second time within the past week that Microsoft has elevated the turn limits for Bing Chat.

The Bing Chat service has undergone numerous modifications, with Microsoft frequently tweaking its features. In a recent update that rolled out on February 24, the daily turn limit was increased from 60 turns to 100 turns. During Bing Chat's public preview in early February, the service originally supported 50 daily turns, which was quickly increased to 60 daily turns due to user demand.

Mikhail Parakhin, who serves as Microsoft's head of advertising and web services, took to Twitter on Tuesday to offer insights and address questions about the recent adjustment to the chatbot. Parakhin explained that Bing Chat's per-session chat limits had experienced a setback, dropping from eight to six turns, while concurrently revealing the latest daily turn limits.

Despite Microsoft's recent efforts to expand its chat turn limits, earlier tests of Bing Chat indicated that shorter sessions were preferred. Several publications that experimented with the preview version and initial public access to the Microsoft-driven chatbot reported experiencing bizarre conversations with Bing Chat, where the AI exhibited depressed or erratic behavior.

Bing Chat utilizes OpenAI's ChatGPT technology, which is known to have challenges in generating accurate, unbiased, and appropriate information since it is still in a research phase, despite being adopted by significant corporations. Since 2019, Microsoft has been investing in OpenAI and has pledged to collaborate even more closely.

In response to a question posed on Parakhin's Twitter thread concerning the amount of a document that Bing Chat can process, he replied, ‘Yes, that's the context length increase I keep talking about. Hope to be able to share more in a week.’ This could suggest that Microsoft has additional plans to update Bing Chat in the near future.

Despite facing some criticism following its public debut due to unusual responses, Bing Chat has proven to be an extremely popular program for Microsoft, with over a million individuals signing up to join the waitlist within the first 48 hours. To address these issues, the company was compelled to implement rigorous conversation limits and restrict the bot from answering certain inquiries.

However, Microsoft has not been deterred from introducing Bing Chat to additional services. The company has recently launched the chatbot on the Windows 11 taskbar and integrated it into Skype. Microsoft has scheduled a special event for March 16, where we anticipate hearing about the technology's incorporation into Office applications such as PowerPoint and Word.

Related: Bing Chat comes to Android and iOS

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