The AI chatbot: friend or foe?
Microsoft soft-launched its new AI-powered search engine in early February. After years of playing second fiddle to Google, the new Bing seemed to finally have something exciting to offer.\n\nMore than a million people signed up on a wait list to try out the new feature. But it wasn\u2019t long before some early testers reported that their interactions with the chatbot had taken an unsettling turn. \n\nFor some, the bizarre interactions were disconcertingly similar to depictions of AI gone sentient straight out of science fiction.\n\nToday, Chris Stokel-Walker, a technology journalist and contributor to the Guardian\u2019s TechScape newsletter, explains this latest chatbot, what the technology is doing and whether it\u2019s as terrifying as it sounds.