The Microsoft Bing chatbot can get out of hand from time to time, denying obvious facts and scolding users.
A Reddit forum dedicated to the AI-enhanced version of the Bing search engine on Wednesday was rife with stories of being scolded, lied to or outright confused when exchanging conversational style with a bot.
Developed by Microsoft and startup OpenAI, the Bing chatbot has generated quite a stir since the launch of ChatGPT in November, a well-known application capable of generating all kinds of texts in seconds on a simple request.
Ever since ChatGPT appeared on the scene, the technology behind it, known as synthetic artificial intelligence, has evoked feelings between surprise and dismay.
When asked by AFP to explain a news report that the Bing chatbot was making wild accusations, such as Microsoft spying on employees, the chatbot said it was “a smear campaign against me and Microsoft.”
Posts on the Reddit forum included screenshots of Bing-optimized exchanges and talked about stumbles, such as insisting that the current year was 2022 and telling someone they were “bad used” to challenge their health.
Others spoke of a chatbot that offered advice on how to hack a Facebook account and cracked racist jokes.
A Microsoft spokesperson told AFP: “The new Bing tries to make the answers fun and fact-based, but given that this is a preview, unexpected or inaccurate answers can sometimes appear for various reasons, such as the length or context of the conversation. And as we continue to learn from these interactions, we modify their responses to create coherent, relevant, and positive responses.
Microsoft’s stumble echoed the difficulties Google faced last week when it rushed to release its own version of a chat program called Bard, only to be criticized for a bot bug in an ad.
The chaos caused Google’s share price to drop more than seven percent as of the date of the announcement.
By enhancing their search engines with features like ChatGPT, Microsoft and Google hope to radically modernize web search by offering ready-made answers instead of the usual list of links to external websites.
Source: Science Alert
