As the artificial intelligence arms race with rival Google heats up, Microsoft has unveiled a revamped Bing search engine powered by chatbot technology.
The Windows, Office and Xbox maker is also providing an update to its Edge web browser following a multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI, which took the world by storm last year with the release Chat GPT.
although Microsoft Long a giant in the computing industry, it’s lagging behind Google When it comes to search engines and web browsers, Chrome is the most popular browser in the world.
It hopes its chatbot — a large language model like ChatGPT that is trained on vast amounts of text data to generate answers, summarize information and engage in lifelike conversations — will give it a boost.
At the launch of a new artificial intelligence service, Microsoft executives said the search experience hadn’t changed in 20 years, a dig at competitors.
Microsoft says the new features may be available within weeks.
How will it work?
Microsoft — an early investor in OpenAI — describes its new Bing feature as “the AI co-pilot for the web.”
The results page will not only return a list of websites and ads, but will also have a sidebar where the chatbot will provide more detailed answers.
For example, searching for a recipe won’t just give you a list of related sites — it might write one for you.
Bing will also seek to review its search results and compile information into a single, understandable answer.
And there will be a very ChatGPT style chat experience, independent of the main search engine, where you can have back and forth conversations on topics of your choice.
New Bing features a ChatGPT-style chatbot.Figure: Microsoft
Will this really get people to Bing?
It’s a million (or billion) dollar question, especially considering that Google has become so synonymous with the search web that it’s become a verb.
We don’t just look it up, we certainly don’t “Bing it”, we “Google it”.
Microsoft believes its AI technology is the best yet — it says the new Bing runs on “a next-generation large-scale language model more powerful than ChatGPT,” which it calls Prometheus.
“This technology is going to reshape almost every software category,” Microsoft boss Satya Nadella said Tuesday at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington.
But Google is also looking to leverage similar technology in its products, Announced its own conversational AI service called Bard earlier this week.
Still, Mr. Nadella looked upbeat, declaring: “The game starts today.”
New Bing invites users to “Ask Me Anything.”Figure: Microsoft
Will artificial intelligence change the way we search the web?
Google and Microsoft are sure to bet on this scenario, and they seem stunned by the sudden success of ChatGPT, released last November — which has amassed more than 100 million users.
It quickly had some users predict the downfall of traditional search engines, as upstart chatbots threaten to upend how people preparing for interviews, reporter writes storyand child doing homework.
Search engines will beat it by staying up to date with current events, which ChatGPT cannot.
For example, the new Bing will leverage real-time news and updates, and can also provide references to its source information — addressing criticism of ChatGPT, which sometimes gets facts wrong.
Startup search engines like Neeva and You.com are also looking to use chatbots to lure users away from the usual suspects and gain a leg up in the AI arms race.
Neeva CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy, former Google ad czar, told Sky News last month He believes a “platform shift” is coming.
read more:
How artificial intelligence is changing the way we search the web
Will this chatbot replace humans?
Can I try the new Bing now?
Microsoft is already rolling out its new-look search engine, but you’ll have to join a waitlist to try it out.
Meanwhile, it has implemented ChatGPT in its Teams software to do things like wrap up meetings and provide quick replies in chat.
Google’s Bard is also slowly rolling out, first to its “trusted users” before a general release in the coming weeks.
The search giant was due to unveil more details about its AI plans at an event in Paris on Wednesday.