When Microsoft first gave select users exclusive access to the Bing AI chatbot, some of the chatbot’s shortcomings became apparent. Microsoft found that long chat sessions were confusing the model and as a result lowered the chat limit with the promise of a longer chat limit in the near future.
That day is today.
Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president and chief consumer marketing officer at Microsoft, announced via Twitter that Bing Chat’s new limit will be 10 chats per session, 120 total chats per day, doubling the previous limit.
Bing Chat today goes to 10 chats per session / 120 total per day.
Constantly advancing engineering with quality of experience that gives us confidence to expand testing. Let us know how it’s working for you!— Yusuf Mehdi (@yusuf_i_mehdi) March 8, 2023
When Microsoft first lowered the chatbot limit, it was limited to five chat turns per session and 50 per day. Soon after, it was expanded to the most recent limit, six chat turns per session and 60 total chats per day.
Also: I tried the Bing AI chatbot and it solved my biggest problems with ChatGPT
As ZDNET pointed out above, the reduced chat limit made it very difficult to have a conversation with the chatbot. By shortening the conversation, the chatbot became useless for most technical indications (such as writing code or text in a specific format), which is ChatGPT’s claim to fame.
The extended chat limit will be a step forward in solving that problem. Normal Bing searches will still not count in your chat totals, giving you more bandwidth to have a meaningful and productive conversation with the chatbot.
Microsoft previously noted that long, complicated chat sessions weren’t something they were necessarily testing internally, so usage and feedback from the public has actually been helpful in learning more about the chatbot.
Also: Bing’s new waiting list is long. Here’s how to get access before
“In fact, the reason we’re testing the new Bing in the open with a limited set of preview testers is precisely to find these outlier use cases that we can learn from and improve the product,” Microsoft said.
Mehdi also shared on Twitter that in just 30 days, the engagement of Bing Chat users has been quite significant. Within a month of its launch, a total of 45 million chats have taken place on the platform, and a third of preview users are new to Bing.
After 30 days, some stats on Bing’s recommitment:
– 45 million total chats
– 1/3 of daily preview users Chat daily
– 1/3 of preview users are new to Bing
– Bing (new and old) exceeds 100 million DAU – and yes, we know we’re still small, https://t.co/3ntxy0oq63… https://t.co/xMBVKxVNUN— Yusuf Mehdi (@yusuf_i_mehdi) March 9, 2023
Despite celebrating Bing’s gains, including 100 million daily active users, Mehdi acknowledges that, compared to other search engines, they are still “a small, low, shared single-digit player,” but adds: ” It feels good to be at the dance.” .
