Microsoft Corp reported its initial findings after a week of testing new artificial intelligence additions to its Bing search engine with users from more than 169 countries.

AI-powered answers have earned the approval of 71% of testers and chat has proven a popular addition that’s deepened engagement, the Redmond, Washington-based company said in a blog post on Feb 15. People are also using the chat-capable Bing beyond specific queries “for more general discovery of the world, and for social entertainment,” the company said.

The new technology comes from Microsoft’s integration of ChatGPT-like technology from OpenAI Inc, the startup responsible for the phenomenally popular online chatbot. Microsoft, an early backer of OpenAI that recently poured in a further US$10bil into the firm and deepened its collaboration, is using a modified and upgraded version of OpenAI’s GPT language models. The chat integration is designed to give fuller answers in a more conversational setting.

There is still much room for improvement, Microsoft said. For queries that require a high degree of accuracy, such as financial reports, the software giant will quadruple the grounding data it sends to the model responsible for producing answers. Microsoft also found that its chat AI struggled on longer conversations of 15 or more questions. “Bing can become repetitive or be prompted/provoked to give responses that are not necessarily helpful or in line with our designed tone,” it said.

Researchers and other testers have posted some aberrant interactions with the Bing bot online, where the AI has taken a threatening or argumentative tone or disputed basic facts like the current year. Microsoft acknowledged people testing out edge-case scenarios and said those efforts are helping it refine the product.

“We know we must build this in the open with the community; this can’t be done solely in the lab,” the company said.

 - Bloomberg