Microsoft's New Bing Chat Hides ADs in its Search Results
Microsoft's New Bing Chat Hides ADs in its Search Results
Summary
Microsoft Corporation has invested $10 billion in ChatGPT, an artificial language model, in an effort to expand its footprint in the rapidly evolving AI and natural language processing markets. The company is exploring the potential of monetizing results from its new Bing search engine. It has been discovered that the new Bing search is serving users advertisements without their permission, and the links are difficult to identify as ads. This means that users are likely to purchase from sponsored ads without understanding that they are being monetised. Microsoft has faced backlash for its lack of ethics in this regard, with the company having fired more than half of its AI ethics team.
Microsoft abandons ethics as it fires more than half of its AI ethics team and turns to profit from user-generated web content. Microsoft allegedly met with advertisers to discuss the potential monetization of ChatGPT results created artificially from user-generated content. Caitilin Roulston, the company's director of communications, says in a statement to The Verge that Microsoft is 'exploring' the potential of monetizing results from the new Bing. However, we discovered that the new Bing search already serves users' advertisements without their permission.
Microsoft Corporation invested $10 billion in creating OpenAI's ChatGPT in late 2022, giving it de facto control of the product. ChatGPT is a large language model (LLM) that responds to natural language prompts with human-like replies. The company had previously developed several AI-powered products, including the virtual assistant Cortana and the Azure Cognitive Services platform, most of which failed to compete successfully with other products in the field. Its investment in ChatGPT is a strategic move to expand its footprint in the rapidly evolving areas of artificial intelligence and natural language processing.
OpenAI predicts that ChatGPT will earn $200 million in 2023 and $1 billion in 2024, based on its slightly more than 100 million daily users . One significant challenge for Microsoft is monetizing the ChatGPT technology while maintaining its worth as a research and development tool. OpenAI currently offers premium access to ChatGPT in addition to a free version. OpenAI also monetizes access to the GPT API, which is the foundation for other AI goods. Microsoft has completely incorporated GPT technology into Bing chat, dubbed "The New Bing." As a result, users can now conversationally engage with the search engine. Experts predict that the new style of conversational search will completely disrupt conventional search engines. This creates additional concerns about the future of sponsored advertising on traditional search engines.
Sponsored links are clearly labelled on the first interface accessible to the user on traditional search engines. Therefore, there is no need for additional user action to expose a link as an AD.
Identifying a link as sponsored is a two-step procedure in this conversational search engine. First, Bing Chat returns conversational responses with embedded direct links to sites. Users hover on these embedded links to watch the real search engine listing to identify and avoid sponsored links.
At least half of the results from the new bing chat contain this type of embedded sponsored links that directly lead to a website where a user can purchase a product. This is especially true for search queries where the results could lead to a purchase.
Unlike traditional search engines, where advertisements are tagged and obvious to the user, Microsoft Bing hides the advertisement tag. As a result, the user is unaware that they are clicking on an ad.
The results in the image below are from a query for 'the best microwave deals in the UK'. These results directly link to web pages with matching products for the query. However, some of these are ADs, which is not evident until the user hovers over this link.
Moreover, this practice evades traditional ad blockers and users' AD browsing preferences to block or allow specific URLs. Bing Chat can Monetize its users' browsing activities without their consent. Ultimately, users will purchase from sponsored ADs without knowing they are being monetized.