What you need to know
- Microsoft has raised the limit on Bing chats to 60 per day and six per session.
- The search engine had previously been restricted to five chats at a time and 50 per day after it was revealed long conversations confused the new Bing.
- Microsoft plans to increase the daily chat cap to 100 in the future.
Last week, Microsoft placed dramatic limitations on its revamped Bing. The search engine's chat functionality was restricted to only five chats within any individual conversation and 50 chats per day per user. Microsoft has raised that cap slightly and has plans to increase it further in the future.
Microsoft placed those limits on Bing because it was discovered that long conversations could confuse the search engine. In some cases, Bing would go off topic or share rude responses. The move was met with backlash on social media.
A recent blog post from the Bing team outlined the company's plans, including increasing the limit on chats per day and per session:
"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 to increasing the cap on chats per day and per session, Microsoft made it so regular searches don't count against chat totals.
Microsoft is also working on giving users options for how Bing will generate responses. People will be given the option to have Bing be precise, balanced, or creative.
