A week after the launch of the new version of Bing powered by artificial intelligence, Microsoft takes a first look at user feedback.
Unlike Google Bard, the new Microsoft Bing is now available and used in more than 169 different countries. According to Microsoft, millions of users are still on the waiting list, but the company promises to greatly expand availability in the coming weeks.
This first week of testing seems to have been very rich in lessons from Microsoft. It must be said that the articles of journalists pointing out the rather serious limits of this system have already been published and even the errors have been highlighted at the Microsoft conference.
A button to go from fiction to reality
On the official Bing blog, Microsoft announces that the new search engine was highly appreciated by the majority as 71% of AI responses received positive feedback (👍🏽). The developers believe that the reviews received are necessary to improve the product and that the currently disclosed limits for Bing might not actually be noticeable in the lab.
Among the limitations highlighted by Microsoft is Bing’s ability to retrieve very recent information. The article mentions Bing’s ability to respond to the sports results of a game in progress. Similarly, for searches that requested specific data like a company’s financial results, the AI could often make up fake numbers. Microsoft wants to increase the data sent to the models in these types of cases to ground them more in reality. Above all, the firm thought of a button for the user to further anchor Bing in fiction or reality.
Chat with Bing is a success
Microsoft is pleased with the success of its conversational agent. Users like to chat with the wizard to guide them in their search for information. The firm points out, however, that in long conversations, with a sequence of 15 questions or more, the AI can tend to get lost. In these moments, you can give answers far from the tone intended by Microsoft and, sometimes, repeat yourself.
In particular, we were able to see screenshots of searches where the AI might start to be dismissive or worrying to the user. Microsoft indicates that this behavior was obviously not wanted by the company that now seeks to rectify the situation.
What’s a little more worrying in our opinion is that here too, Microsoft is talking about giving more control to the user to adjust the AI. Hopefully, the company won’t end up relying too much on users’ decisions and will put appropriate security measures into their system.
Most Requested Features
The article also discusses features requested by users. There is, for example, the possibility of asking the AI to directly book a flight or send an email. Microsoft promises to consider all these requests for a future release.
Microsoft reminds that Bing’s algorithms are updated daily with a larger version rolling out once a week. Let’s hope Bing’s new chat assistant improves very quickly.
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