ChatGPT and Bing are a new era of search engines
"This is a new day for search," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Microsoft has been trying to get you to use Bing for 13 years now, but you don't want to, so its global market share is still in the low single digits. Now the company is doing everything possible to better compete with Google.
At a press conference, Microsoft announced the integration of the Open air GMT-4 model into Bing, which has long been rumored, providing a ChatGPT-like job in the search engine.
The company is also launching a new version of its Edge browser with these new artificial intelligence features built into the sidebar.
Bing ChatGPT includes the most up-to-date data
As expected, the new Bing now has the option to start a chat on its toolbar, which then takes you to a ChatGPT-like dialog. One important point should be noted here: while the OpenAI ChatGPT bot was trained on data that only covers 2021, the Bing version is much more up-to-date and can handle requests related to much later events.
As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella noted, the team wants to stay true to its principles of artificial intelligence and recognized that, as with every new technology, it is important to be aware of the potentially negative consequences. "It's also about seeing clearly the unintended consequences of any new technology," he said. He stressed that Microsoft wants to use technologies that increase human productivity and correspond to human values.
Nadella noted that, in his opinion, this technology will change "almost every category of software," and stressed that such technology can change the Internet. In his opinion, every interaction with a computer in the future will be carried out through an agent. The first stage of this, at least for Microsoft, is search.
Bing and Microsoft will show results based on GPT
As for the new Bing features, Microsoft will show these GPT-based results in the box on the right side of the search results page. They will appear when searching for facts that Bing knows the answer to.
But there's also a more ChatGPT-like experience for questions that are a bit vague and don't have an exact answer. The only other significant difference that you will probably notice right away is that Bing also sometimes tries to prompt you with its own questions and suggest possible answers to these questions. Microsoft's model is clearly much more modern compared to what ChatGPT currently offers. This includes, for example, pricing data or the ability to use the latest data for travel tips and itineraries — and he will also be happy to write you an email to share this itinerary with your family.
Another important feature here — and I think we'll see it in most of these tools — is that Bing cites its sources and links to them in the "learn more" section at the end of its answers. Each result will also include the possibility of feedback.
Bing focused on links in search will not disappear
It is also worth emphasizing that the old link-oriented version of Bing will not disappear. You can still use it as before, but now it's augmented with artificial intelligence.
Microsoft emphasized that it uses a new version of GPT, which can give more relevant answers, annotate them and provide relevant results, while providing a more secure user interface. This is called the Prometheus model. Essentially, Microsoft is taking OpenAI models here and then wrapping Prometheus and other Bing technologies around them.
Microsoft obviously has a very close relationship with OpenAI. After its initial $1 billion investment, the company recently announced that it would invest even more and expand its partnership with OpenAI, which in turn led to today's announcement. And while Bing has always been a competent search engine (and arguably better than most people ever thought it was), it has never been widely adopted. This has always been good enough, but it doesn't give users a reason to switch. ChatGPT may offer this reason—at least until Google introduces its competitor to a wider audience.
Currently, there is no advertising attached to the chat function of the ChatGPT function in the new Bing, but Microsoft noted that it will monetize these features with advertising.