New Bing’s ‘Sydney’ personality was secretly in testing for years by Microsoft
The mysterious Sydney personality within Bing just had some light shed on it.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
What you need to know
Microsoft announced itsnew Bing powered by ChatGPTearlier this month, but the concept of conversational search is not new. In fact, a recent report byThe Vergetells the story of how Microsoft tested a chatbot named Sydney for years, dating back to 2021. The tech giant had already worked with bots since 2016 but the tale of Sydney is particularly interesting due to its relationship with the new Bing.
Sydney is the codename for a chatbot from Microsoft. Its name may sound familiar, since it was recently revealed that itappeared for some testers in Indianear the end of last year. Some users have been able to get the new Bing to refer to itself as Sydney.
“Sydney is an old codename for a chat feature based on earlier models that we began testing in India in late 2020,” said Caitlin Roulston, director of communications at Microsoft, to The Verge.
“The insights we gathered as part of that have helped to inform our work with the new Bing preview. We continue to tune our techniques and are working on more advanced models to incorporate the learnings and feedback so that we can deliver the best user experience possible.”
Microsoft worked on other chatbots between 2017 and 2021. Originally these were separate bots designed for different websites and services. According to The Verge, Microsoft shifted toward a unified bot approach with Sydney.
A turning point in Microsoft’s approach to bots and search was ademonstration made by OpenAIin the summer of 2022.
“Seeing this new model inspired us to explore how to integrate the GPT capabilities into the Bing search product, so that we could provide more accurate and complete search results for any query including long, complex, natural queries,” said Jordi Ribas, Microsoft CVP of Search & AI in aLinkedIn post.
Get the Windows Central Newsletter
All the latest news, reviews, and guides for Windows and Xbox diehards.
After meeting with OpenAI, Microsoft expanded its partnership with the AI company and got to work on its own Prometheus model, which uses the next generation of GPT and Bing to generate responses based on real-time information.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, the launch of the new Bing has not been entirely smooth. Rude and aggressive responses generated by the search engine’s chat functionalitydrew criticism. Those comments were similar to onesmade by the chatbot Sydneyamong testers in India in November 2022.
To prevent Bing’s chatbot from getting confused by long conversations,Microsoft limited the number of chatsper session and total chats per day to five and fifty, respectively. The company laterraised those caps slightly.
Microsoft hasdiscussed the odd behavior demonstrated by Bingduring the search engine’s first few weeks in preview. AI can improve quickly, but we’ll have to wait to see how things trend to determine if Sydney’s comments and other issues were early hiccups or long-term problems.
Sean Endicott is a tech journalist at Windows Central, specializing in Windows, Microsoft software, AI, and PCs. He’s covered major launches, from Windows 10 and 11 to the rise of AI tools like ChatGPT. Sean’s journey began with the Lumia 740, leading to strong ties with app developers. Outside writing, he coaches American football, utilizing Microsoft services to manage his team. He studied broadcast journalism at Nottingham Trent University and is active on X @SeanEndicott_ and Threads @sean_endicott_.
