What you need to know
- Bing Chat now allows people to use the tool without logging in to a Microsoft account.
- Unauthenticated chats are limited to five turns per session, which is significantly lower than the 20 turns that are allowed for those signed in with a Microsoft account.
- Microsoft has gradually increased the limits on Bing Chat since dramatically lowering them just after the chatbot launched.
Microsoft launched Bing Chat powered by ChatGPT just over 100 days ago. The AI-powered chatbot has gained notoriety and new features over the past few months, but until now it has been limited to people with a Microsoft account. That is no longer the case. Microsoft is rolling out support for using Bing Chat unauthenticated, meaning anyone can use the tool.
"As some of you have noticed, we’ve started rolling out unauthenticated chat access on Bing. Seeing only 5 chat turns per session? Sign in to have longer conversations," said Bing VP Michael Schechter on Twitter.
There is, however, a major limitation for anyone using Bing Chat without a Microsoft account, a firm limit of only five chats per session. As a result, unauthenticated chats are quite restricted. But they're still possible, which is a step in the right direction.
Microsoft initially launched Bing Chat in preview with almost no limits. The company then put a turn limit in place per conversation and per day. If you're logged in with a Microsoft account, you can have up to 20 messages in a conversation and up to 100 turns in a day.
The limits were put in place because longer conversations could confuse the search engine. Bing would occasionally go off topic or share rude responses, which drew criticism online. Microsoft has since improved Bing Chat to be able to support longer conversations without running into these issues as frequently.
