Bing chatbot limitations

Real estate agents: don’t push Bing beyond limits

As technology continues to advance, real estate agents are turning to chatbots to assist them in finding and summarizing data commonly found on real estate listing sites. While these chatbots can be helpful, it’s important to be aware of their limitations.

Bing chatbot, for example, may not be the best option for real estate agents seeking accurate information. Pushing Bing beyond its limits could result in erroneous results or hallucinations that appear to be correct but are factually incorrect.

In a recent experiment, I give the Bing chatbot a Grade D- when asked to find and summarize data commonly found on real estate listing sites like Realtor.com or Zillow.com. While the chatbot was able to accurately find the first two addresses, it made up a third address that did not exist.

It’s important to note that the Creative Mode of Bing chatbot is not tuned for factual data, so these types of errors are to be expected. However, even when using the Precise Mode, Bing was only able to find information on two homes and not all the requested information, despite there being approximately 30 homes that met the broad criteria in the prompt.

The lesson for real estate agents is clear: if the information already exists in an easily searchable form, it’s best to use it rather than relying on Bing chatbot to find it. Pushing Bing to try to do it could result in inaccurate information, which could ultimately harm your business and your clients’ trust in you.

In conclusion, while chatbots can be helpful tools for real estate agents, it’s essential to understand their limitations and use them appropriately. If you’re unsure whether a chatbot is the right tool for the job, it’s always better to err on the side of caution and rely on more reliable sources of information.

Example of limitations

I give the same prompt to Bing using Creative Mode and Precise Mode. While it created a table, the results are incomplete and have errors.

Find 3 single-family houses for sale with 4 bedrooms in Rancho Palos Verdes. List address, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, interior square feet, sale price. Put results in a table.