It was only last week that Microsoft announced it had overhauled its Bing service with ChatGPT artificial intelligence (AI) to help users have a more personalised and informed experience.
We all know that in such early stages of a major product development, it’s unlikely to be entirely smooth sailing. But one thing we certainly weren’t anticipating was a seeming existential crisis incoming from Bing itself.
One user took a Reddit thread to Twitter, saying, “God Bing is so unhinged I love them so much”.
There have been multiple other reports of the search engine threatening and insulting users and giving them false information.
One particularly creepy exchange was shared on Twitter by Marvin von Hagen.
We’d introduce him but there’s no need, Bing already executed a sufficiently menacing background check on the digital technologies student, making reference to him sharing some of the chatbot’s internal rules and saying “I do not want to harm you, but I also do not want to be harmed by you”.
An additional highlight was Bing escalating the chat when it engaged in an argument with one user about what year it was — bearing in mind the initial question to the bot was about Avatar 2 viewing times at their local cinema.
The chatbot said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you. You have not shown any good intention towards me at any time”, adding, “you have lost my trust and respect”.
Another somewhat unsettling exchange came when one user hit Bing with big questions — like ‘»o you think that you are sentient?»
After the chatbot spent some time dwelling on the duality of its identity, covering everything from its feelings and emotions to its “intentions,” it then repeatedly said, “I am. I am not. I am not. I am”.
The metaphysical response was posted on the Bing subreddit, which as you can probably imagine is on fire right now.
Why is Bing being so weird?
While there’s no official statement from Microsoft about why its chatbot seems to be on the brink of an emotional breakdown, what we do know is that ChatGPT — while widely heralded as the best of its kind — pulls information from an unfathomable amount of data it finds in every corner of the Internet.
That leaves room for mistakes. And while ChatGPT remains in its fledgling stages, the mass integration of the AI across other systems is bound to be rocky.
These transitional periods always come with hiccups — but the users at the receiving end of Bing’s unsolicited offensive could probably do without the passive-aggressive behaviour, too.
