Microsoft is bringing together its Windows experiences and its Windows devices teams to form one division, and it has appointed company veteran Pavan Davuluri with the task of leading it. As The Verge notes, Davuluri has been serving as head of the Surface team since last year, after Microsoft split up Windows experiences and devices following Panos Panay's departure. The company is expanding his role again after another departure, this time of former Windows experiences lead Mikhail Parakhin, who was in charge of the Bing search engine and its advertising business. In a letter written by Rajesh Jha and obtained by the publication, the company's technology chief said Parakhin "has decided to explore new roles." It's not quite clear if he's leaving Microsoft altogether or is still exploring for new opportunities within the company. But it's worth noting that he decided to vacate his role a week after Microsoft hired Deepmind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, who apparently asked Parakhin to report to him directly.

"Panos Panay" may not be an anagram for "passion," but at Microsoft, it was pretty darn close. Panos Panay, the chief product officer for Microsoft, unexpectedly stepped down on Tuesday, after serving nearly twenty years at the company. Panay rose to the ranks of chief product officer, overseeing the development of Windows and its complementary Surface PC line. Interestingly, Panay gave no specific reason for leaving, and at press time had only posted a single message announcing his departure on Twitter/X. Even more interestingly, Panay had originally said he would oversee the launch of Microsoft's next Surface devices at an event this week, on Sept. 21.

Microsoft's Bing chatbot is offering replies in three different tones as it seeks to address some criticisms of the service. The search engine's chatbot, powered by the same technology behind ChatGPT, will now give users options for three types of response: creative ("creating surprise and entertainment"), balanced ("reasonable and coherent") or precise ("concise, prioritising accuracy"). The new-look Bing is being rolled out gradually but generated wild responses in some interactions shortly after its launch last month, including declaring its love for a New York Times journalist. This prompted Microsoft to add some restrictions, which resulted in Bing's chatbot refusing to answer some queries. Microsoft's head of web services, Mikhail Parakhin, said the updated Bing should now make fewer refusals and "hallucinations", or false replies. Referring to the tone options, Parakhin said he preferred the "creative" tone, although "precise" was "much more factual".

Microsoft's Bing chatbot is offering replies in three different tones as it seeks to address some criticisms of the service. The search engine's chatbot, powered by the same technology behind ChatGPT, will now give users options for three types of response: creative ("creating surprise and entertainment"), balanced ("reasonable and coherent") or precise ("concise, prioritising accuracy"). The new-look Bing is being rolled out gradually but generated wild responses in some interactions shortly after its launch last month, including declaring its love for a New York Times journalist. This prompted Microsoft to add some restrictions, which resulted in Bing's chatbot refusing to answer some queries. Microsoft's head of web services, Mikhail Parakhin, said the updated Bing should now make fewer refusals and "hallucinations", or false replies. Referring to the tone options, Parakhin said he preferred the "creative" tone, although "precise" was "much more factual".

Artificial intelligence software can recognize faces, translate between Mandarin and Swahili, and beat the world's best human players at such games as Go, chess, and poker. What it can't always do is explain itself. AI is software that can learn from data or experiences to make predictions. A computer programmer specifies the data from which the software should learn and writes a set of instructions, known as an algorithm, about how the software should do that--but doesn't dictate exactly what it should learn. This is what gives AI much of its power: It can discover connections in the data that would be more complicated or nuanced than a human would find.