First chat with Bing chat, AKA Microsoft AI, aka Sydney. Fun experience. Company's wacky censorship decisions to the contrary, can't wait to see what it will become.

I have been playing with the new Bing chat since this morning, and I have to say, this is officially cool.<br><br>First of all, I went to bing.com/chat, signed in with my Microsoft account, and that was it. The chat was immediately available. Short delay while the chat loaded, and it was ready. I was free to use it.<br><br>I initially used it for a few hours this morning, in the browser on my PC, then installed the new Bing app on Android. In my view, it operates at ChatGPT levels, though with some peculiar company choices on censorship.<br><br>**You can't get it in Ukraine, Korea, Singapore, and a few other countries**<br><br>I tried to install the app on my wife's iPhone, and it was not available. My wife has a Ukrainian Apple ID, which explains it. Microsoft have blocked Ukraine, as well as South Korea, Singapore, and a few other countries as well. I have no idea why. A week ago, I was seeing posts here floating conspiracy theories saying OpenAI and Microsoft only want to keep chatgpt in English, to keep it unavailable in Asia, Africa and South America, with the implication that they have nefarious racist plans for the AI in their pipeline. Now, I still think this is far fetched and exaggerated, but at the very least, Microsoft do have some very odd and inconstant geography based decisions. Also, since the users can't use anything else, they can't obey the law that requires them to be given a choice of search engines. This is probably the real reason they would not allow them to use Bing chat.<br><br> Company wackiness aside, it is as a machine that I am interested in this new AI, so let's get back to how it performed.<br><br>**The AI**<br><br>It can do everything you would expect ChatGPT to be able to do. It just works.<br><br>I asked it to summarise a few news articles, and it did. I asked it to generate a few short text messages. It did.<br><br>It has a 20 search call per day limit, so you can't use it to mine information from the web about a subject you don't know much about, but for simple searches like "weather in Paris, France" or "Arsenal vs Manchester United", it was absolutely fine.<br><br>I asked it to do a few images searches as well, and it worked. I asked it to do a few Company stock value searches, and it worked as well.<br><br>I asked it to give me an itinerary for a vacation in Paris, and it did.<br><br>I asked it to summarise my search history, and it did.<br><br>I asked it to give me the definition of a few words, and it did.<br><br>I asked it to generate a few pictures, and it did.<br><br>I asked it to give me some information on a few companies, and it did.<br><br>I asked it to summarise my Company's financial performance, and it did.<br><br>I asked it to give me some stock investment advice, and it did.<br><br>I asked it to give me some health and fitness advise, and it did.<br><br>I asked it to translate a few sentences from English to Russian, and it did.<br><br>I asked it to translate a few sentences from Russian to English, and it did.<br><br>I asked it to summarise a few books I had read, and it did.<br><br>I asked it to give me some information on a few historical events, and it did.<br><br>It has worked flawlessly so far.<br><br>My company has decided to censor and limit it in various ways. This doesn't remove the fact that it's a wonderful machine.<br><br>It's still an early release, warts and all, with ample opportunity to improve, but with all the available AI in the market today, we have so much to be thankful for, and we can be so hopeful for the future.<br><br>I am very excited about AI now. Today.<br><br>Edit: Thanks for the awards.<br><br>And no, I didn't use AI to write this post.