Microsoft shares a crucial update on Bing chats. Details here

“As we mentioned recently, very long chat sessions can confuse the underlying chat model in the new Bing. To address these issues, we have implemented some changes to help focus the chat sessions,” Microsoft said in the blog post.

“Our data has shown that the vast majority of you find the answers you’re looking for within 5 turns and that only ~1% of chat conversations have 50+ messages. After a chat session hits 5 turns, you will be prompted to start a new topic. At the end of each chat session, context needs to be cleared so the model won’t get confused. Just click on the broom icon to the left of the search box for a fresh start,” it said further in the blogpost.

Microsoft’s decision comes days after some media outlets reported that answers from the new Bing search engine were potentially dangerous and that the technology might not be ready for prime time.

Microsft earlier said that it found that in long, extended chat sessions of 15 or more questions, Bing can become repetitive or be prompted/provoked to give responses that are not necessarily helpful or in line with our designed tone. We believe this is a function of a couple of things:

Very long chat sessions can confuse the model on what questions it is answering and thus we think we may need to add a tool so you can more easily refresh the context or start from scratch

The model at times tries to respond or reflect in the tone in which it is being asked to provide responses that can lead to a style we didn’t intend.This is a non-trivial scenario that requires a lot of prompting so most of you won’t run into it, but we are looking at how to give you more fine-tuned control.

Early search results and conversations with Microsoft’s Bing and Google’s chatbot, called Bard, have shown they can be unpredictable.

This week, when a Reuters reporter asked the new version of Bing outfitted with AI for the price of car air filters, Bing included advertisements for filters sold by auto parts website Parts Geek, not merely specific answers to the question.

The new Bing, which has a wait list of millions of people for access, is a potentially lucrative opportunity for Microsoft. The company said during an investor and press presentation last week that every percentage point of market share it gains in the search advertising market could bring in another $2 billion of ad revenue.