- Microsoft may bring back Sydney, the alias behind its once sassy AI chatbot, to Bing's search engine, $4
- Kevin Scott, Microsoft's CTO, said Bing may include a feature where users can interact with Sydney.
The secret, sassy alias that was once behind Microsoft Bing's new AI-powered search engine could be making a comeback.
Kevin Scott, Microsoft's chief technology officer, told $4 that the company might bring back $4.
Sydney was first tested by users in India and China in early 2021, $4 The general public first learned about Sydney two years later after Kevin Liu, a student at Stanford University, $4 by prompting it to recite its internal rules document. Sydney's popularity grew as users like $4 after having an extended conversation with the bot.
The tech giant added guardrails just days later after users accused it of generating unhinged responses to their queries. $4, $4
But some users were "really irritated" by how Microsoft dialed down the chatbot's capabilities, Scott said.
"They were like, 'That was fun. We liked that,'" he told The Verge.
That may be why Scott wants to bring Sydney back. He said the new Bing may soon include a personalized feature he calls a "meta prompt" that allows users to choose to interact with Sydney "in the not-too-distant future."
"If you want it to be Sydney, you should be able to tell it to be Sydney," Scott told The Verge.
It's not just users. Microsoft employees are also missing Sydney — so much so they made merch inspired by the alias.
"We've got Sydney swag inside of the company, it's very jokey," Scott told The Verge.
Scott's comments come more than three months after $4 After Bing's Sydney stoked fears from observers across the internet, Jordi Ribbas, Bing's corporate vice president, said $4.
Meanwhile, the company announced plans earlier this week $4 so users can access information in real time.
Microsoft declined Insider's request for comment.