What you need to know
- Microsoft announces new AI-powered Bing search and Edge browsers.
- The new search experience promises to deliver improved search results, new interactive chats, and the ability to create in Edge.
- New Bing and Edge AI experiences are powered by next-generation language models that are even more powerful than ChatGPT.
- Google recently announced that it is using LaMDA to test its own AI chat experience.
At an event on Tuesday, Microsoft revealed that it is launching new AI-powered experiences for its Bing and Edge browsers. This upgrade is powered by OpenAI, the company behind the popular ChatGPT service.
With new AI capabilities, Microsoft promises (opens in new tab) Better search with “more relevant results” and a new sidebar for comprehensive results. It also builds on advancements from ChatGPT 3.5, allowing Bing to take advantage of features users have come to expect from their service. This means Bing can generate more comprehensive answers to your searches with a new side panel, or take advantage of new interactive chat features for more complex queries.
The new Bing now shows a chat box instead of a search box. The search box is limited to 1,000 characters.
The Edge browser allows users to query content displayed on the screen using the Edge sidebar. For example, Microsoft says you can use the compose feature to generate content and the chat feature to summarize reports.
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, said: “Today, we are announcing Bing and Edge powered by AI Copilot and Chat to help people get more from search and the web.”
Microsoft says it was able to leverage ChatGPT’s capabilities for this customized search experience thanks to its new Prometheus model, which helps provide “relevant, timely, and targeted results.” In fact, Microsoft is leveraging OpenAI’s next-generation language model, which is more powerful (and modern) than ChatGPT. As a result, Bing’s search ranking engine has seen its biggest improvement in decades, making our search results more relevant and accurate than ever before. This gives Microsoft the boost it needs to truly challenge Google and put Bing on the map.
A limited preview is currently available for those who want to try it out with a small pre-built query. For a more enriched experience, you can also sign up for the waiting list. Microsoft says it plans to expand the preview to both desktop and mobile devices in the coming weeks.
This especially comes a day after Google announced it was testing its own AI chat service called Bard, powered by a lightweight version of LaMDA. Although the service is only available in limited testing, it offers similar enhancements by providing more relevant and conversational results for search queries. It may take a while, but as popular as the AI chatbot craze is, the company doesn’t seem to want to misunderstand this.
