Microsoft loosens the guardrails for its Bing chat bot following restrictive weekend

After a weekend in conversation jail, Microsoft is set to slowly encourage its Bing + ChatGPT bot to interact with users in a broader capacity once again.

Late last week, Microsoft pumped the brakes on the number of sequential queriers users could ask the Bing + ChatGPT bot in an effort to reduce the amount of oddball, incorrect and emotionally manipulative answers it had been delivering to some people up until that point.

Microsoft’s patchwork plan was to limit the number of chats turns per session to 5 and the total number to 50 per day. As the company admits, “this was in response to a handful of cases in which long chat sessions confused the underlying model. ”

Perhaps, due to the nature of day-in and day-out development of the platform, Microsoft’s own engineers acknowledge that their internal testing failed to imagine some of the longer and more intricate chat session scenarios that led to conversations that involved shadow personalities, argumentative tones, and gaslighting by the chat bot.

Ironically, it was the users request for the company to allow Bing + ChatGPT to continue its zany commentary that has Microsoft implementing a new testing barrier of 6 chat turns per session and up to 60 total chats a day.

We intend to bring back longer chats and are working hard as we speak on the best way to do this responsibly. The first step we are taking is we have increased the chat turns per session to 6 and expanded to 60 total chats per day. Our data shows that for the vast majority of you this will enable your natural daily use of Bing. That said, our intention is to go further, and we plan to increase the daily cap to 100 total chats soon. In addition, with this coming change your normal searches will no longer count against your chat totals. We will provide you more updates as we continue to make improvements in the model.

In addition, Microsoft will also be testing tone options that users can choose to have the chat bot deliver its results in that include, Precise, Balanced, and Creative. Evident by their naming convention precise tones will include shorter and more focused explanations while, balanced offers a bit more of a conversational tone to short and concise answers and lastly, a Creative one that will offer more chatty responses.

With the intent to get back to 100 total chats for users soon, Microsoft is quickly iterating on user feedback, and that feedback increasingly seems to imply users are here for Bing+ChatGTP’s messy evolution.