Bing disables “trending” feature after wildly inappropriate results

Enlarge / A screenshot from a shutterstock video of a tit. Bing linked to the video with the caption "big tits stock video footage." (credit: Shutterstock)

Microsoft has shut down a feature in its Bing search engine that shows popular articles from major websites after Ars Technica reported that the feature was showing wildly inappropriate results from the stock photo site Shutterstock. How inappropriate? Well, here are a couple of screenshots I took on Wednesday morning after a reader tipped me off to the problem:

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  The first three images in the carousel. We blurred the "little girl peeing" image.

This is what I saw after searching Bing for "Shutterstock." These weren't the very top results-I scrolled down a bit before taking these screenshots-but this "trending articles" carousel appeared on the first page.

I wasn't about to click on a link to "boys erection" without talking to a lawyer first. So my editor advised our tipster to notify the FBI, while I emailed Microsoft and Shutterstock to see if they could explain what was going on.

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