The race begins today, and we intend to move quickly, according to Nadella. Most importantly, we want to enjoy ourselves while innovating in search once more because it’s about time.
“It’s a new day in search,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at the product launch event. The paradigm for web search hasn’t changed in decades, according to Nadella, but AI can deliver information more fluidly and quickly than traditional methods.
Today, the company demonstrated how “the new Bing” operated in a variety of settings. One of these allows users to interact directly with the Bing chatbot by asking it questions in a chat interface like ChatGPT, while another mode displays conventional search results alongside AI annotations.
Microsoft demonstrated several sample searches, including looking up travel advice, recipes, and Ikea furniture. Bing was instructed to “create an itinerary for each day of a 5-day trip to Mexico City” in one demonstration.
The chatbot provided a comprehensive response to the query, outlining a general course of action and providing links to additional resources.
The new Bing can also find news about recent events, unlike ChatGPT. Even queries about the search engine’s own launch were successfully addressed.
According to Microsoft, GPT 3.5, the AI OpenAI language model that drives ChatGPT, is the engine behind all of these features. This is referred to by Microsoft as the “Prometheus Model,” and the company claims it is more capable than GPT 3.5 in terms of providing search queries with accurate and annotated results.
Today marks the launch of the new Bing “for desktop limited preview,” but it seems users can only “ask” one of a number of pre-programmed queries, and each time they do, they get the same answers. A waitlist for future registration for full access is also available. Microsoft is also introducing “chat” and “compose,” two new AI-enhanced features for its Edge browser in addition to the new Bing. They’ll be integrated into Edge’s sidebar.
While “compose” serves as a writing assistant, helping to generate text, from emails to social media posts, based on a few starting prompts, “chat” enables users to summarize the webpage or document they’re viewing and ask questions about its contents. The launch of the new Bing coincides with a flurry of AI activity from rival Google and Microsoft. The popularity of AI text generation has skyrocketed since ChatGPT went live on the internet last November. Microsoft is looking to capitalize on this enthusiasm and has already disclosed how this technology will be integrated across its suite of office software. Microsoft has a close partnership with OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT.
Google, on the other hand, was unprepared for what some claim to be a paradigm shift in how users find information online. The introduction of ChatGPT is said to have set off a “code red” within the search engine giant, with founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin—who had been absent—being called in to help deal with what might pose a threat to the company’s main source of income.