Microsoft has officially unveiled its long-anticipated upgrade to Bing search and yes, it has everything to do with ChatGPT.
Today, Microsoft hosted a surprise in-person event at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington. The event, which was not streamed live but held for the press, revealed the latest generation of Bing, the company’s search engine, and Edge, the company’s web browser. The company announced that the next generation of Bing would use GPT, OpenAI’s language processing model that is used to power tools like ChatGPT, to offer a new chat experience for people using the search engine.
As reported by The Verge, the company is calling the upgrade the “new Bing.” As we reported last week, the new version of the search engine will offer a chat experience, which will allow users to ask questions and receive answers from OpenAI’s technology, turning search into a conversation that users can have back and forth with AI.
The “new Bing,” as Microsoft is calling it, offers a chat function, where users can ask questions and receive answers in natural language. The feature uses an updated version of the AI language model built by OpenAI that underpins ChatGPT — known as the “Prometheus Model” — which offers more up-to-date information with annotated answers.
In one example during the event demo, Bing was able to create a five-day itinerary for a trip to Mexico, just by asking the search engine to do it. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that the integration of OpenAI’s technology into Bing begins “a new day in search.”
You can check out a preview of what to expect from Bing chat in a video the company released on YouTube below:
The new version of Bing is available today on the desktop in a “limited preview.” The company says that anyone can try a limited number of queries and sign up for full access. Microsoft says it plans to start rolling out the full version to millions of people “in the coming weeks.”
Microsoft’s announcement comes a day before Google is set to host its own AI-focused event in Paris. The company is expected to go into more detail about Bard, its competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. That event will be live-streamed at 2:30 PM CET on February 8th. You can tune in on YouTube below:
The AI wars are here and they are happening fast!
