It has been around six weeks since Microsoft launched Bing Chat, its new AI search engine powered by OpenAI's ChatGPT. Since then, the AI went through a shaky start but through several updates has improved a lot. With the new GPT-4 AI engine now powering Bing Chat, Microsoft is confident of the quality of the search tool.
And it seems that the preview waitlists that have been a part of the service since launch are now lifted. Since that first introduction, Bing Chat has been available in limited preview. Users needed to go on a waitlist to be able to gain access to the chatbot.
Over a million signed up in the first week and millions more over the last month. Microsoft has been matching improvements to the AI with incremental increases in how much people can use the new Bing. The company has increased the number of sessions and turns per day several times in the last two weeks.
Users can now have 10 separate sessions with 15 turns per session each day. Furthermore, Microsoft has been working to grant access to more people on the waitlist. It now seems the waitlist has been removed entirely.
No More Waiting
Windows Central spotted that there was no waitlist anymore. I used tried several times across various Microsoft accounts and I can confirm this seems to be the case. To find out for sure, I asked the AI itself, and you can see the results above.
Now when you go to bing.com/new and hit “join waitlist2 you will get instant access to Bing Chat.
You will need to sign in with a Microsoft account and use Microsoft Edge. However, while the waitlist is down, Microsoft's communications director Caitlin Roulston says the following:
“During this preview period, we are running various tests which may accelerate access to the new Bing for some users. We remain in preview and you can sign up at Bing.com.”
This means Microsoft could reverse this decision as it continues to tweak the experience and decided what's best for the preview.
Tip of the day: After years of hefting a laptop around, you inevitably build up a menagerie of Wi-Fi networks. For the most part, they'll sit on your PC, hardly used, but at times a change in configuration can make it difficult to connect to a network your computer already remembers. At this point, it can be beneficial to make Windows forget a Wi-Fi network and delete its network profile.
