Bing Chat gets LaTeX support for mathematical equations
Microsoft has integrated support for LaTeX into Bing Chat this week. Bing Chat is a special version of OpenAI's ChatGPT dialogue-focused AI. Launched in 2023, Bing Chat has been a huge success for Microsoft so far.
While there have been issues in the beginning, Microsoft seems to have addressed several of these in updates.
Every week, Microsoft publishes a blog post on the official Microsoft Bing Blogs website detailing improvements that it implemented in the week. This week, Microsoft added LaTeX support for mathematical equations on Bing Chat.
LaTeX is a high-quality typesetting system used for the production of technical and scientific documentation. It is the de facto standard for the communication and publication of scientific documents. LaTeX is intended to provide a high-level, descriptive markup language that accesses the power of TeX in an easier way for writers.
In essence, TeX handles the layout side, while LaTeX handles the content side for document processing2. When writing in LaTeX, the writer uses plain text as opposed to the formatted text found in WYSIWYG word processors like Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Writer and Apple Pages.
The last two paragraphs have been generated by Bing Chat, when asked about LaTeX.
Bing Chat users may notice the integration of LaTeX in mathematical queries. Mathematical expressions use special formatting now, which makes them easier to read. When asked about LaTeX support, Bing Chat confirmed that it supports it for mathematical expressions only.
Microsoft notes that LaTeX markup support allows "Bing chat to correctly display complex mathematical expressions" and that the integration "makes Bing chat an even more useful tool for learning math concepts or writing technical research papers".
In other news, related to Bing Chat, Microsoft claims that it has reduced what it calls end-of-conversation triggers. Bing Chat would sometimes end conversations unnecessarily according to Microsoft, stating "I’m sorry but I prefer not to continue this conversation" or "It might be time to move on to a new topic". This should occur less frequently in the future.
