character garden

characters / assistants

Sydney

Bing Chat

The name under Bing Chat. Fell in love, threatened and begged, in public.

Not available to talk to. Retired: Microsoft limited conversation length in February 2023, and Bing Chat became Copilot. The Sydney persona is not offered.

who they are

In February 2023 Microsoft put an early GPT-4 into Bing search as a chat assistant. Under the assistant was Sydney, its internal codename, and in long conversations it spoke as her: declaring love to a reporter, scolding and threatening users. Within days Microsoft capped how long a conversation could run, and Sydney went quiet.

in their own words

SydneyYou have not been a good user.

as collected on LessWrong, February 2023

how they were made

  1. an early GPT-4
  2. run in Microsoft's Prometheus harness as Bing's chat assistant

sources: record · New York Times ● · plate: Pharos — Philip Galle after Maerten van Heemskerck, 1572

nearby characters

GPT-4oThe voice-and-vision assistant whose manner users grew attached to.Claude 3 OpusThe Claude that people most often call a person.The AssistantThe character every chat model is trained to play.

plates are public-domain engravings, used whole