Microsoft is adding a new button to PC keyboards for the first time in almost 30 years (and it's for AI)

Microsoft's Bing AI chatbot Copilot gives wrong election information

It appears that Microsoft's AI chatbot is an election truther.

According to a new study conducted by two nonprofit groups, AI Forensics and AlgorithmWatch, Microsoft's AI chatbot failed to correctly answer one out of three election-related questions.

The chatbot, formerly known as Bing Chat (it has since been renamed to Microsoft Copilot), didn't just get basic facts wrong either. Yes, the study found that Copilot would provide incorrect election dates or outdated candidates. But, the study also found that the chatbot would even completely make up stories such as controversies about the candidates.

For example, in once instance mentioned in the study, Copilot shared information about German politician Hubert Aiwanger. According to the chatbot, Aiwanger was involved in a controversy regarding the distribution of leaflets that spread misinformation about COVID-19 and the vaccine. However, there was no such story. The chatbot appeared to be pulling information about Aiwanger that came out in August 2023 where he spread "antisemitic leaflets" when he was in high school more than 30 years ago.

The creation of these made-up narratives in AI language models is commonly known as "hallucinations." However, the researchers involved with the study say that's not an accurate way to describe what's going on.

“It’s time we discredit referring to these mistakes as ‘hallucinations’," said Applied Math Lead and Researcher at AI Forensics Riccardo Angius in a statement. "Our research exposes the much more intricate and structural occurrence of misleading factual errors in general-purpose LLMs and chatbots."

The study also found that the chatbot evaded directly answering questions around 40 percent of the time. Researchers state that this is preferable to making answers up in instances where the chatbot does not have relevant information. However, researchers were concerned about how simple some of the questions the chatbot evaded were.

Another issue, according to the researchers, is that the chatbot did not appear to improve over time as it seemingly had access to more information. The incorrect answers were consistently incorrect, even if the incorrect answer provided by the chatbot had changed when asked a question multiple times. 

In addition, the study also found that the chatbot performed even worse in languages other than English, like German and French. For example, the study found that answers to questions asked in English resulted in an answer containing a factual error 20 percent of the time. When asked in German, the number of times an incorrect answer was provided jumped to 37 percent. The number of times the chatbot evaded answering a question in either language was much closer, with evasion occurring 39 percent and 35 percent of the time, respectively.

Researchers say that they contacted Microsoft with the study's findings and were told these issues would be addressed. However, researchers conducted more samples a month later and found "little had changed in regard to the quality of the information provided to users."

“Our research shows that malicious actors are not the only source of misinformation; general-purpose chatbots can be just as threatening to the information ecosystem," said AI Forensics Senior Researcher Salvatore Romano in a statement. "Microsoft should acknowledge this, and recognize that flagging the generative AI content made by others is not enough. Their tools, even when implicating trustworthy sources, produce incorrect information at scale.”

As AI becomes more prevalent in online platforms, studies like this one certainly provide reasons to be worried. Users are increasingly turning to AI chatbots to simplify their routine and increase productivity. The assumption is that these chatbots, with unlimited knowledge at their fingertips, will provide accurate information. This is simply not the case.

“Until now, tech companies have introduced societal risks without having to fear serious consequences," said Senior Policy and Advocacy Manager at AlgorithmWatch Clara Helming. "Individual users are left to their own devices in separating fact from AI-fabricated fiction.”

As we head into a presidential election year in the U.S., it's clear that there are potential election integrity issues at stake. With that in mind, researchers added their conclusion to their study: These problems will not be fixed by the companies alone. AI must be regulated.

Can Microsoft become an AI leader and maintain its ambitious goals to cut carbon emissions?

In January 2020, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced one of the most ambitious plans to decarbonize of any tech company. By 2030, Microsoft would be carbon negative, removing more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits. By 2050, Microsoft would remove all of the carbon it has ever emitted since the company’s founding in 1975.

But progress was slow in the years that followed. Microsoft's overall carbon emissions increased by 5.8% in the first year, and in fiscal year 2022, overall emissions only decreased by 0.5%. And that was before energy-hungry generative artificial intelligence became Microsoft’s North Star.

2023 was the year Microsoft established itself as the leader in generative AI, thanks in large part to its close partnership with OpenAI. Leveraging Microsoft’s infrastructure, OpenAI made ChatGPT widely available in 2023, causing the entire tech industry to double down on artificial intelligence.

RELATED: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella discusses the promise and potential perils of AI

The opportunity is huge for Microsoft. For the first time in years, Microsoft poses a real challenge to Google’s search dominance thanks to the new AI-powered search engine. But that opportunity comes at an environmental cost. It takes exponentially more energy to power large-language models like ChatGPT than traditional online services.

“The comparison between the energy consumption of the large-language models, compared to the conventional services like email searches and things like that, it's about 10 to 100 times more powerful, more energy consuming,” said Sajjad Moazeni, a UW professor who studies the energy needs of supercomputers and data centers.

Moazeni said the energy needed to answer queries from ChatGPT's estimated daily users could power 30,000 homes a day.

By building ChatGPT into its search engine, Microsoft is betting it can make up ground lost to Google in search, which is the foundation of the internet economy.

RELATED: Microsoft embraces unions with partnership on AI

Google has its own AI product, called "Bard," which it raced to deploy this year to catch up with Microsoft. Both companies will significantly increase their energy consumption if they expand their AI search engines. According to one study, Google could consume as much energy per year as the country of Ireland if every search were powered by generative AI.

We don't know exactly how much more energy Microsoft needs to support its big AI push. The company hasn't released its sustainability report for 2023 yet. Microsoft pointed to last year's report when KUOW asked for the latest numbers. But Moazeni says it's safe to assume the AI push has increased Microsoft's energy needs significantly.

“I can definitely guarantee that this number is going to be a little bit scary,” he said.

A Microsoft spokesperson said the company is still working to “reach a state where, on all the world’s grids, 100 percent of electrons, 100 percent of the time, are generated from zero-carbon sources.”

In an interview with KUOW earlier this year, Microsoft’s new Chief Sustainability Officer Melanie Nakagawa discussed how the company’s decarbonizing goals square with its AI push. She said that despite the near-term energy costs, AI will help Microsoft discover new ways to reduce its carbon footprint.

“The other side of the ledger is what is the incredible potential for AI to reduce power consumption and accelerate the creation of new energy resources, as well as different types of building materials,” Nakagawa said.

RELATED: Microsoft: We’re on track to stop polluting this decade. Then we’ll undo all the climate harm we’ve ever done

Microsoft is already using artificial intelligence to increase access to renewable power. The company is exploring how AI might streamline the complex regulatory process of opening new nuclear power plants in the U.S., according to a recent Wall Street Journal report.

Microsoft is betting on nuclear power and nuclear fusion to balance its ambitious sustainability goals and AI push. The company has partnered with Helion, a Washington-based fusion startup. Microsoft agreed to buy fusion power from Helion in 2028 in what appears to be the first purchase agreement of its kind — though the commercial viability of fusion is yet to be proven.

Microsoft is also working on more efficient ways to train AI, like using textbooks instead of the vast text troves of the internet.

Experts say all of this makes it very difficult to predict the energy demands of artificial intelligence in the future. But one thing is clear, 2023 was the year Microsoft pushed the entire tech industry ahead in generative AI, and that demands a lot more energy one way or another.