Bing Chat rolling out personalized answers

Microsoft Bing is rolling out personalized answers within Bing Chat, the company announced at the AI event in NYC today. Personalized answers use your Bing search history to give you a more personalized response to your Bing Chat questions. We’ve seen Bing Chat testing a memory feature, which is what Bing is calling “personalized answers.”

“Now, your chat history can inform your results. For example, if you’ve used Bing to track your favorite soccer team, next time you’re planning a trip it can proactively tell you if the team is playing in your destination city. If you prefer responses that don’t use your chat history, you can turn this feature off in Bing settings.,” Microsoft said. Personalized answers is rolling out soon.

How it works. When you have enough search history within Bing, Bing Chat will use those previous searches and queries to give you a more fined-tuned and personalized answer. So if you were planning a trip to Seattle and simply ask Bing Chat which events should I go to, it might find events in Seattle, since it knows you are in or going to Seattle.

Here is a photo I took from a demo I was given at the event today:

It will not only look at your location or location-based searches but also know that since you searched for the Seattle Seahawks, it should recommend football-related events. It also might give you ideas about vegan restaurants in the area or other events that interest you based on your previous queries.

Here is a video Microsoft released of this feature:

90-day history. Bing said it will only use the past 90-days of chat / query history for this personalization. And if you delete all or select queries, those will not be included in your Bing Chat responses.

Why we care. Personalization in search can be useful and helpful for searchers. But over the years, search engines like Google and even Bing have downplayed how personalization is used in search. Immediate previous query and location are used within Google Search today but outside of that, Google does not use much personalization within search.

Maybe for chat, personalized answers will be more useful.