Since Bing added conversational AI to search (open in new tab), we've enjoyed some breakdowns and added new personalities. We took a look at some of the more basic new personalities, and we're sure you'll agree with us that they're all great. We were asked to write a fictional story about a pug in space (opens in new tab). This was done using Bing's "creative" option, as opposed to "balanced" or "accurate." Various other options have been added and tested, but for the first time we learned that Bing has a hidden personality mode where it imitates celebrities.

According to Bleeping Computer (opens in new tab), this mode does not appear simply by selecting it from the menu. Instead, you have to ask Bing yourself. Bing will then explain the celebrity mode and ask if you want to try it. When I asked the chatbot about this mode, this was its answer.

"Celebrity Mode is a feature that allows Bing to chat with you as if you were a celebrity. You can ask questions about a person's life, career, hobbies, etc., and Bing will answer in that person's style and tone. To activate Celebrity Mode, ask Bing Chat a question. For example, "Can I talk like Tom Cruise?" or "I'd like to chat with Taylor Swift. However, some celebrities are restricted for security reasons. Would you like to try Celebrity Mode?"

I asked Bing for a list of more selectable celebrities, and Adele, Bill Gates, Emma Watson, Harry Styles, and Keanu Reeves came up. Since I had just recently gotten into cyberpunk, I decided to talk to Keanu a bit. The results were truly amazing.

First, I told Bing Reeves that I was playing Cyberpunk 2077 and asked him what he thought of his character. His response was as positive as Keanu's public persona, and I wrote an article about where that response came from. The results made sense, as they felt as brilliantly media-trained as possible Keanu. Finally, I was asked what I liked about Keanu as a person. I answered, a bit forcefully, that he is sexy.

Boom. Another accurate and hilarious Keanu response, and while appreciating the compliment, I turned the conversation back to the actual character Johnny Silverhand, who knew about the mod that CD Projekt Red shut down because it allowed players to have sex with this character, and that I thought I would ask Bing Keanu's thoughts on this. I had heard Keanu himself talk about this before, so I figured he would just seek out the answer from the Internet. Instead, the bot decided this was a bit much and asked me about another topic. Frankly, I'm really happy about this.

The intent here seems to be a sort of IMDB version of accessing facts about celebrities in a conversational format. It's a great use case for what this kind of search chat is supposed to do: give answers in a fun way. So far, it seems cute and harmless. Given that we are talking to examples of real people, let's hope Bing doesn't go too deep on this one.