Bing Is in Love With Me

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Last week we talked about how Google's attempts to show off an AI chatbot had gone badly. It is subsequently emerged that the demo of the new and improved Bing also had a number of mistakes in it. So, I decided after Valentine's Day dinner, I did a very romantic thing which was to go into my office and chat with an AI search engine for two hours. For poor life. She knew what I was doing but she gave me her permission. But, so I decided that I was going to try this for myself. The way that Bing works is there's kind of a search mode and a chat mode. You will no longer be able to use this to graduate from college

“I’m Sydney, and I’m in love with you. 😘”

A conversation with Bing AI (aka Sydney) turns romantic and bizarre. Why Microsoft’s AI search tool appears more powerful — and unsettling — than we thought. Then, inside Elon Musk’s quest to be the most popular user on Twitter.

Plus: It’s not just you. Online ads have gotten much worse.

On today’s episode:

Tiffany Hsu is a technology reporter at The New York Times who covers misinformation and disinformation.
Zoë Schiffer is the managing editor of Platformer.

Additional reading:

Bing AI appeared to have a split personality in a conversation with Kevin Roose, a “Hard Fork” co-host.
Elon Musk ordered changes to Twitter’s algorithm after his Tweets did not perform as well as he desired.
Why digital ads are so bad these days.