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USA Today Sports Media Group
USA Today Sports Media Group
Sport
Charles Curtis

The Microsoft Bing AI chatbot having disturbing conversations with users, explained

Welcome to FTW Explains, a guide to catching up on and better understanding stuff going on in the world. Have you seen headlines, tweets and stories about a Bing chatbot that’s having some very weird conversations with users? And wondering what’s up with that? We’re here to help.

As you may have seen, ChatGPT is very much a thing these days that people are having fun with — that uses artificial intelligence to craft answers to questions or requests.

But now, Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, is using an AI chatbot that users have been trying out. And that results have been, uh, pretty disturbing.

Let’s dive in:

Wait, what's this all about?

Microsoft recently put together new features on its new Bing search engine. It uses AI software from the company that makes ChatGPT, and the early reviews seemed encouraging.

But then? People started having conversations with the Bing chatbot. And the responses they got were kind of hair-raising.

Really?

Yeah. Kevin Roose of the New York Times wrote up his extensive conversation with the chatbot that took quite a turn:

The Verge’s James Vincent wrote a story with this headline: “Microsoft’s Bing is an emotionally manipulative liar, and people love it.”

 

Is it really that bad?

Yes. Yes it is.

GAAHHHHHH!! What does Microsoft say about this?

From the New York Post:

A Microsoft spokesperson told The Post that it expected “mistakes” and appreciates the “feedback.”

“It’s important to note that last week we announced a preview of this new experience,” the rep said. “We’re expecting that the system may make mistakes during this preview period, and the feedback is critical to help identify where things aren’t working well so we can learn and help the models get better.”

That's just wild.

Sure is.

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