Bing says it’s alive
If you said ten years ago that Microsoft’s Bing search engine would get a voice and a personality, you would have been laughed out of the room (people might laugh that you were bringing up the word “Bing” at all). But thanks to the company’s multi-billion dollar partnership with OpenAI, that’s exactly what happened.
In February, Microsoft unveiled Bing Chat, a ChatGPT-powered conversation robot. Things immediately went off the rails. Among the AI’s unhinged interactions with the public during its first weeks, Bing said it was alive, used racial slurs, shared its plans for world domination, and tried to convince a New York Times reporter to leave his wife. The chatbot also revealed it had a secret alter ego called “Sydney,” which Microsoft apparently used as a secret code name for the chatbot.
Microsoft jumped to reign in Bing (aka Sydney) as quickly as possible, neutering the chatbot’s responses and forcing it shut off conversations if it detected even a hint of weirdness. Bing now refuses to talk about Sydney if you bring it up.
