Bing’s AI chatbot has a new chat session limit — again

When Microsoft first gave select users exclusive access to Bing's AI chatbot, some of the chatbot's shortcomings became evident. Microsoft found that long chat sessions confused the model, and as a result shortened the chat sessions last Friday. After receiving user feedback, on Tuesday, Microsoft unveiled a new change to chat limits. 

The chatbot's chat limit will increase, from its current 5 chat turns per session and 50 per day, to 6 chat turns per session and 60 total chats per day. This is Microsoft's first step in expanding chat limits with the end goal being a 100 total chat limit soon. 

As ZDNET noted previously, the reduced chat limit made it very difficult to have a conversation with the chatbot. By cutting the conversation short, the chatbot was rendered useless for most technical prompts (such as drafting code or text in a specific format), which is what ChatGPT's claim to fame has been. 

Also: The new Bing waitlist is long. Here's how to get earlier access 

The expanded chat limit will be a step forward in solving that issue. In addition, normal Bing searches will no longer count against your chat totals, giving you more bandwidth to hold a meaningful, productive conversation with the chatbot. 

Microsoft notes that convoluted, long chat sessions were not something they were necessarily testing for internally, so the public's use and feedback has actually been useful in learning more about the chatbot. 

“In fact, the very reason we are testing the new Bing in the open with a limited set of preview testers is precisely to find these atypical use cases from which we can learn and improve the product,” says Microsoft. 

Also: ChatGPT's latest challenger: The Supreme Court

The tech giant also announced that it is beginning to test a new feature that would let users choose the tone of the chat from more precise, which focuses on concise answers, to balanced, to more creative which allows for more chatty answers.