In the IT industry, the words “free” and “advertisement” go hand in hand, and so does Microsoft. Corporate Vice President Yusuf Mehdi confirmed in an official blog post, that they are currently working on the placement of advertising in Bing Chat. Compared to colleagues from The Verge said Caitlin Roulston, Director of Communications in Microsoft’s Search & AI department.
“Yes, ads will appear in the new Bing, especially in chat. As the new Bing is in preview, there may be some variations in how you see it. We’re still exploring new ways of ad experiences and will add more over time report on it,” said Roulston.
A matter of trust: advertising as a source for the chatbot
So far, Microsoft seems to have refrained from particularly intrusive advertisements, as the examples of the software developer Debarghya Das show. In a search for the cheapest Honda cars, the Bing chatbot provided him with several price quotes marked “Ad”. It is questionable to what extent the advertisements could influence the answers from OpenAIs ChatGPT-4 within Bing in the future. Corresponding results could come from unverified sources and thus reduce confidence in the answers. Finally, Microsoft’s partners are encouraged to optimize their advertising on the Bing chatbot. They are to receive a share of advertising revenue if their ads have contributed to answering chat requests.
According to Microsoft, planning for advertising integration is still in its infancy. User feedback should decide how frequently and how prominently advertising will burden or enrich the Bing chatbot in the future.
See also:
Logo, Ki, Artificial Intelligence, Bing, AI, Artificial Intelligence, ChatGPT, OpenAI, Microsoft Bing, Bing Search Engine, GPT, GPT 4.0, GPT-3.5
