Bing limits chat sessions as OpenAI founder says AI tools are ‘somewhat broken’

Following multiple reports of its chatbot getting confused, Microsoft caps how many questions users can ask per session and day.

Chat with SearchBot

Bing is increasing its limits on chat “turns” per session to 6 and 60 total chats per day.

Soon, Bing will increase its daily cap to 100 total chats. Another change is that “with this coming change your normal searches will no longer count against your chat totals,” Microsoft announced today.

A “turn” is a conversation exchange that contains both a user question and a reply from Bing, Microsoft explained.

This comes just five days after Bing chat sessions were capped at 50 questions per day and 5 per session.

Why is Microsoft limiting Bing chat sessions? Because there have been many bad examples shared of the new Bing AI chat sessions featuring everything from gaslighting to accidental racism. Microsoft has said it didn’t anticipate extended chatting, which “can confuse the underlying chat model.”

New chat tones. Another addition is the ability to customize your preferred tone for chat:

  • Precise: Shorter, more search-focused answers.
  • Balanced.
  • Creative: Longer and more “chatty” answers.

What’s changing. Five days ago, Microsoft announced chat sessions on the new Bing were being capped at 50 chat “turns” per day and 5 chat “turns” per session.

Our data has shown that the vast majority of you find the answers you’re looking for within 5 turns and that only ~1% of chat conversations have 50+ messages. After a chat session hits 5 turns, you will be prompted to start a new topic. At the end of each chat session, context needs to be cleared so the model won’t get confused. Just click on the broom icon to the left of the search box for a fresh start.

– Microsoft, The new Bing & Edge – Updates to Chat

AI tools “somewhat broken.” Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has acknowledged that AI tools are “somewhat broken” but believes its critical to show them to the world to “get it right.”

“We think showing these tools to the world early, while still somewhat broken, is critical if we are going to have sufficient input and repeated efforts to get it right. the level of individual empowerment coming is wonderful, but not without serious challenges.”

And while this crop of AI tools isn’t very scary, Altman hinted at a need for regulation, saying “we are potentially not that far away from potentially scary ones.”

You can read his full tweet thread here.

Why we care. We are witnessing a technology revolution. ChatGPT’s debut was a game changer like the iPhone was to smartphones, as Altman mentioned. AI continues to have many issues and will impact our every day work – good and bad. For now, we’ll continue to watch and document as the search engines and tool providers evolve.


About the author

Danny Goodwin
Staff
Danny Goodwin has been Managing Editor of Search Engine Land & Search Marketing Expo - SMX since 2022. He joined Search Engine Land in 2022 as Senior Editor. In addition to reporting on the latest search marketing news, he manages Search Engine Land’s SME (Subject Matter Expert) program. He also helps program U.S. SMX events.

Goodwin has been editing and writing about the latest developments and trends in search and digital marketing since 2007. He previously was Executive Editor of Search Engine Journal (from 2017 to 2022), managing editor of Momentology (from 2014-2016) and editor of Search Engine Watch (from 2007 to 2014). He has spoken at many major search conferences and virtual events, and has been sourced for his expertise by a wide range of publications and podcasts.

Get the must-read newsletter for search marketers.