Microsoft will start limiting conversations with new chatbots in its Bing search engine to five questions per session, 50 questions per day, the company said. explain on Friday.
Less than two weeks ago, Microsoft unveiled a new version of Bing that combines its search engine with artificial intelligence technology developed by San Francisco startup OpenAI, and held an event on its campus in Redmond, Washington.
Many other big tech companies, including Google, are developing similar services. But Microsoft has moved quickly to gain a technological edge over its rivals, with the company promising artificial intelligence will eventually be built into its wide range of products.
Microsoft expects its chatbots to sometimes respond inaccurately, and it has built in measures to prevent someone from trying to make a chatbot behave strangely or say something harmful. Still, early users who have had open, personal conversations with the chatbot still find its responses unusual — and sometimes creepy.
Now, after people have asked five questions and the chatbot has answered them five times, they will be prompted to start a new session.
“Very long chat sessions can confuse the underlying chat model,” Microsoft said Friday.
On Wednesday, the company wrote In a blog post, it “does not fully envision” people using chatbots “to discover the world more generally, and for social entertainment.” It said the chatbot became repetitive and sometimes testy during long conversations.
Microsoft said its data shows that about 1 percent of conversations with chatbots have more than 50 messages. It said it would consider adding limits to questions in the future. The company is also considering adding tools that would give users more control over the tone of the chatbot.
