Microsoft Slips Ads Into AI-Powered Bing Chat (theverge.com) 56
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Microsoft is "exploring" putting ads in the responses given by Bing Chat, its new search agent powered by OpenAI's GPT-4. Microsoft confirmed this is happening, albeit in an experimental form, in a blog post published today. Here's the relevant bit from the very end after "a bit of context" explaining no one should be surprised: "We are also exploring additional capabilities for publishers including our more than 7,500 Microsoft Start partner brands. We recently met with some of our partners to begin exploring ideas and to get feedback on how we can continue to distribute content in a way that is meaningful in traffic and revenue for our partners.
As we look to continue to evolve the model together, we shared some early ideas we're exploring including:
- An expanded hover experience where hovering over a link from a publisher will display more links from that publisher giving the user more ways to engage and driving more traffic to the publisher's website.
- For our Microsoft Start partners, placing a rich caption of Microsoft Start licensed content beside the chat answer helping to drive more user engagement with the content on Microsoft Start where we share the ad revenue with the partner. We're also exploring placing ads in the chat experience to share the ad revenue with partners whose content contributed to the chat response."
As we look to continue to evolve the model together, we shared some early ideas we're exploring including:
- An expanded hover experience where hovering over a link from a publisher will display more links from that publisher giving the user more ways to engage and driving more traffic to the publisher's website.
- For our Microsoft Start partners, placing a rich caption of Microsoft Start licensed content beside the chat answer helping to drive more user engagement with the content on Microsoft Start where we share the ad revenue with the partner. We're also exploring placing ads in the chat experience to share the ad revenue with partners whose content contributed to the chat response."
And... what do you expect? (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, they are a business, and GPT is quite literally expensive. Not only they paid $10 billion for the investment, the algorithm itself is very computationally intensive.
(Not GPT, but there are some image generation algorithms that require up to $20 per run on cloud services. These ones? I think 1/100 of a cent, probably, but they each add up).
So, either a subscription like chatgpt ($20/month, with a very restrictive quota nevertheless), or "you become the product".
Either way we have to pay for the privilege (personally, I prefer to pay upfront, and not have my personal data "monetized").
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Completely dick move and something that should be made illegal is to give something away for free just to charge for it later.
Re:And... what do you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
But they aren't retrospectively billing you for any use you made of the system before they introduced ads. Why should it be illegal to start charging for something that was initially provided for free? Did you sign a contract with them where they agreed to provide it to you for free for indefinitely, or at least for some time frame? If not, what are you even complaining about? You built something around a free service with no contracted availability on the assumption it would always be there and always be free? That sounds like pretty poor planning on your part. And all this over a useless AI chatbot...
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But they aren't retrospectively billing you for any use you made of the system before they introduced ads. Why should it be illegal to start charging for something that was initially provided for free?
If your product was good, why not start charging for it to begin with? For why, because it allows for exploitation.
If you are OK with Big Tech with big tech to continue being allowed to silently exploit their user base in which they really have little recourse, I guess this wouldn't be an issue for you.
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I fail to see who's been exploited here. You got to play with a new toy, if you want to keep playing with it you can either pay or put up with ads. How have you been exploited?
I dislike a lot of what "Big T
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I definitely was expecting it to happen. I was hoping it didn't happen so fast but hey. One of the good things I liked about about chatGPT was it was like a search engine with out the crud, you asked it a question it answered without the 1/2 page of adds at the beginning. Sure you would have to confirm it but, hey at least it was a start.
At least our jobs are a bit safer if companies, student don't want random adds coming in there work.
Now we need an AI that removes adds from the web.
As for you becoming the
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I guess for some, placing ads in AI queries weakens the technology's authenticity as far as being a reliable source is concerned - kind of like how all the top responses from Google always lead to purchasable products of some kind. Still, that's probably what the majority of Bing users want
Evil company continues to be evil... (Score:3)
Re:Evil company continues to be evil... (Score:5, Insightful)
evil company
Listen, I'm not a huge fan of Microsoft either, but this has little to do with "evil" and more to do with "company". If you have a gripe with corporate capitalism (and there are many gripes to be had), that is another story altogether. But lets not look at something predictably profit-focused from a profit-focused organization and then screech about "evil" or whatever.
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To me company => evil, or at least publicly owned company. When your main driver is make as much money as you can you eventually choose money over doing what is morally right, because its morally wrong not to maximize your shareholders profit.
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When we start creating scapegoats with faces, we lost sight of the larger, structural problems behind those singular entities.
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> you eventually choose money over doing what is morally right
What is morally wrong about running ads?
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
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What I am waiting to see is whether the advertising is blended into the responses themselves - that would be bad, and I fear they will do it sooner or later. But the techniques in this summary sound more overt. If so, that's reasonable.
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How is this evil? What search engine doesn't have ads in their listings?
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The MS-Truman Show.
A business opportunity (Score:5, Funny)
For AI-powered adblockers.
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Time to give MS the really BIG finger. (Score:2)
and move away from them.
If a chat history is used in evidence of a crime like a Text or email conversation and CharGPT is involved even remotely, it could be challenged in court and have that evidence thrown out.
I'm just waiting for that to happen and then the Lawmakers could ban the thing entirely.,.. just like TikTok then.
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I'm just waiting for that to happen and then the Lawmakers could ban the thing entirely.,.. just like TikTok then.
They wont. They are only banning TikTok for racist reasons.
Re:Time to give MS the really BIG finger. (Score:5, Informative)
racist reasons
Saying that "distrust of the CCP" is racist towards the ethnically Chinese is about as silly as you can get.
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Seem racist to me. Doesn't look like anything that is going to protect me in the long and isn't something that will improve my quality of life. If anything it has gotten worse since it has giving racist more fuel to spread on their fires.
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> and move away from them.
Yeah, I've been hearing people say that since Gates' Open Letter.
That was in 1976.
So good luck with the boycott, let us know how it goes.
That didn't last long. (Score:2)
Buy this before I tell you (Score:2)
Am I having a heart attack?
ChatGPT: "I'll tell you the symptoms. But first, let me tell you about this device that you can buy to monitor your heart. It is only $9.99 and can be delivered in 2 days. It is the best in the market and we only have a limited supply. Would you like to buy it and add express shipping for $19.99 to get it in an hour?"
As if (Score:5, Insightful)
As if I needed another reason not to use Bing...
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Oh, what search engine do you use that doesn't put ads in it's listing?
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What ads?
Do you mean the ads I'd see if I turned off my ad blocker?
I confess I have no idea, as I never turn it off.
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Here's one: it's not Google. Sure, there's Duck D.G., but they don't yet have the same crawl volume. We've been oligopolated.
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I've noticed strange irrelevant results slipping into my DuckDuckGo searches. They seem to be keyed to locality, i.e. mentions of local businesses, but not relevant to the search.
Makes me suspicious about how DDG is using at least location data.
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I think it's great that, for once, Microsoft got the jump on Google. Google got caught flat-footed, they did NOT see this coming. I'm frankly impressed, and though Bing search results are still crap, I'm enjoying trying it for the chat feature.
Advertise Themselves Out Of Business (Score:3)
The irony will soon be complete.
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You mean, like the way the Internet has advertised itself out of business? Good luck with that hope.
Make Bing useless again within 2 months (Score:3)
This must be a record even for Microsoft.
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Where is this chat? (Score:3)
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You have to sign up.
Go to bing.com. Click the "Chat" tab. You'll see a prompt to get on a waiting list. It took about two days for me to get it enabled.
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Even when using the shit browser, and waiting to load, that just sends me to a scam.
Ads work only when there are consumers (Score:2)
Shouldn't the sellers also manage that side, fostering consumer confidence, providing them with means to earn decent wages, etc? Doing here is stepping into role traditionally played by government.
It is in the interest of sellers to prevent other sellers cheating people? Doing something in this sphere is stepping into law enforcement territory.
At some point sellers collectively should
"Publishers" (Score:1)
News Summaries (Score:3)
It already does this with its news summaries from the Edge splash screen. Click on one of the news items, and the text will include, inline, an advert for something or other, in the middle of the article itself, albeit as a separate paragraph. The first time it happened I assumed it was a scripting error on their part, but I'm now fairly convinced it's deliberate.
If only I could remember what the ads were for...
Next up (Score:1)
Trust is easy to lose... (Score:2)
How can we trust the AI to actually answer our questions truthfully if it's going to advertise to us, i.e. try to persuade is or just lie to us?
The idea of an "AI assistant" who is working for someone else is not attractive.
Perhaps if the adverts are clearly separate from the real answers it may be workable (the secret of Google's success), but any mixing of my interests and others is going to make me distrust the AI and not rely on it, and try not to use it. That's not a model for business growth.
Try all you want but we'll still avoid it. (Score:2)
They keep trying to force us to watch ads but we avoid it. If an ad is on the TV we mute it or change channels. If an add is on the radio we mute it or change stations, or turn it down at least to better ignore it until it's over quite often. We run ad blockers on websites, and they all know the truth, if they make it so you absolutely must watch or pay attention to the ad, many of us will just not use the service.
Youtube is a great example of this. I pretty much never use it if it's on a device where I'll
Clippy is Coming (Score:2)
At this point, I'm surprised they don't furl up a zillion ads, stuff them up Clippy's pooper, and release-bomb him into Windows 11.
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THIS version of Clippy might actually be useful.
Good for Them (Score:2)
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Precisely. Good grief, it's free. Do people think "free" stuff just magically appears out of thin air? How do people think this technology gets paid for, exactly?
Surprise, surprise (Score:1)
Ads will kill neutrality and ensure censorship (Score:1)
If Microsoft depends on advertising revenue to manage the Bing AI, it will lose its neutrality and objectivity. It will prefer results and output that favor advertisers. Censorship of results and a bias toward what appeals to the mass market will be assured.