The wonderful world of AI-powered chatbots has been around for less than four months, but Microsoft has already started using ads on its platform. Users who ask questions on Bing’s AI chatbot will soon be able to receive paid answers in return.
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For example: A Twitter user asked a Bing chatbot which is the cheapest car of the Honda brand in 2023. In response, he was given two choices, both of which were asked for ads. It is not yet certain if all ads within an AI chatbot will be displayed in this way. “I don’t think ad blockers can do anything about it,” says technology editor Jo Van Burek.
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“The statement from Microsoft’s communications director is that the ads will be similar to the ads you see in regular search engines,” says Van Burek. “But it’s so entangled in the output of an AI chatbot” that you can no longer tell if it’s an ad or not. This is what makes her even more miserable. It comes across as a fairly human chatbot, but wants to sell you something on every third sentence.
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One hundred million users
According to Microsoft, there are more than one hundred million users of the Bing search engine daily. The same number of people will use the AI chatbot every day. A third of users are said to be new, due to innovation in artificial intelligence. “So it makes sense for Microsoft to do this, because you can make money with it.”
