Microsoft not only continues to make improvements in its Bing Chat chatbot, but it will also be using Bing Chat to make improvements to the old-fashioned internet search functions as well.
In a Twitter exchange this weekend, Mikhail Parakhin, Microsoft"s head of Advertising and Web Services, responded to a request from a user who said that while using regular Bing Search, the top Featured Answers to a question have worse answers than ones provided by Bing Chat. He asked if Microsoft could "replace it with a modified-cached version of chat or so". Parakhin responded with this:
Yep, they use old technology and crowdsourcing, we will replace them ASAP. Probably even some new UI.
That wasn"t the only thing Parakhin talked to Twitter users about this weekend. One user said on using Bing Chat in a browser "if you scroll down too far, it adds an example query to the chat, which almost certainly isn’t what the user wants to do!" He asked Parakhin if this could be fixed. Parakhin replied:
Yes, sorry, we are preparing for improved SERP-Chat synchronization, it"s a tricky interaction, so the bugs keep creeping in. Fixing.
This is the unfortunate dichotomy: we want everything being factual, at the same time we ask for "opinion". Opinion, by definition, cannot always be correct. We used to have a mode where you could say "without searching the web", but there were so many complaints...
— Mikhail Parakhin (@MParakhin) March 12, 2023
Another exchange with two Twitter users was about how Bing Chat would sometimes just offer up "the main opinions that you find by search, rather than engaging with my questions/discussion." Parakhin answered in this way:
This is the unfortunate dichotomy: we want everything being factual, at the same time we ask for "opinion". Opinion, by definition, cannot always be correct. We used to have a mode where you could say "without searching the web", but there were so many complaints...
So it appears users will have to see Bing Chat create answers while also searching the web for other info.
Finally, Parakhin repeated what he has basically said in the past to another Twitter user: the Bing Chat team is working to expand chat turn limits beyond its current caps along with improving its formatting and context limits.
All three are being actively worked on. We fixed a ton of formatting issues already, flights with the larger context are running and the further limit relaxation is coming soon.
Hopefully, we will get some more Bing Chat updates on March 15, when Microsoft holds its Future of Work with AI online event.