Demo of Microsoft's AI-Powered Bing Included Several Small Mistakes
Microsoft has been wowing the press and the public with its new AI-powered Bing. But it turns out the technology made several mistakes during Microsoft’s public demo last week.
The errors included made-up information about a financial earnings report from Gap, which was noticed by engineer and writer Dmitri Brereton, who published a post(Opens in a new window) going over the mistakes.
During Microsoft’s demo(Opens in a new window), which can be viewed online, the company asked the ChatGPT-powered Bing to supply the key takeaways to Gap’s Q3 earnings report. The program proceeds to do so, except part of the summary is completely off.
For example, the AI-powered Bing says that Gap reported an operating margin of 5.9%. However, the company’s earning report(Opens in a new window) clearly states the operating margin was 4.6%.
The AI-powered Bing also says that Gap projected net sales growth in the low double digits. But the actual report states that “net sales could be down mid-single digits year-over-year in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022.”
In an earlier part of the demo, Microsoft also used the new Bing to query for “What are the pros and cons of the top 3 selling pet vacuums?” The search engine is quick to produce a result, listing the benefits and drawbacks of three pet vacuums.
However, Brereton notes that Bing made an error when describing the Bissell Pet Hair Eraser Handheld Vacuum. It lists the product having a “short cord length of 16 feet” as a con. However, the vacuum is a cordless model designed to be portable. On top of this, Bing seems to provide an answer for the top-recommended pet vacuums, not necessarily the best-selling.
In another part of the demo, Bing made an error when it came to listing
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