Microsoft Bing and Edge are poised to get more power thanks to an injection of technology from OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. The new and improved Bing is designed to work like a conversation, using next-generation ChatGPT technology to help the search engine respond to your queries in natural language and provide additional follow-up help — and after using it myself, I can’t help but be impressed.
Although not true AI, OpenAI’s chatbots are trained on a large amount of text, including software documentation, code samples, and large swathes of the Internet. The company publicly launched the first version of ChatGPT in late 2022 (don’t miss our guide to what ChatGPT is), and it immediately surprised and shocked users with the quality and clarity of its answers.
While public scrutiny revealed that ChatGPT frequently types errors (often called “hallucinations”) and steals details in a traceable manner, that hasn’t stopped industry observers from speculating how the technology will revolutionize many companies, starting with research.
OpenAI has already attempted to monetize its golden goose with the launch of ChatGPT Plus, and Google has unveiled Google Bard, an Alphabet chatbot that uses a similar language learning model to answer search queries and other questions in natural language.
We’re at the dawn of something big here. Our search engines are about to start talking to us, and in a few years that might sound as natural as the omnibar at the top of your browser right now. Remember, not long ago, most browsers had you type a search engine URL into your browser’s address bar before you could search for something, rather than just letting you type your query directly. We now type searches into the address bar as if it were second nature; Could we soon be chatting with bots to answer our questions in the same way?
After spending some time researching the new and improved Bing with its OpenAI-powered upgrades, I have to say I’m a believer. Once you see how well it works, I guess you won’t be able to help yourself from using the new Bing (or whatever competition is launching this year) to offload even more searches and planning to a computer.
With the new compose functionality, not only can Bing do a reasonable job of telling you what to cook with what’s in your pantry — it can provide links to recipes, translate those recipes into other languages, and email all your guests about what to expect and when to bring for dinner tonight.
Do not believe me? Here’s what it’s like to use Bing with the power of a neural network at your fingertips.
Hands-on with Bing: OpenAI turbochargers are looking for something more
Microsoft’s new and improved Bing search is only available in a very limited preview form at the time of publication, and you can head over to bing.com/new (Opens in a new tab) to request access. At some point Microsoft will presumably roll out the upgraded Bing to everyone, at which point it will start to see how web search will move from questions to conversations.
The new and improved Bing search will also be available via a widget in the Microsoft Edge browser, and you’ll be able to tap on it to quickly do things like ask Bing search questions, ask it to create content for you, and more.
I’ve actually spent some time using the new version of Bing at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, and I can tell you that it takes some getting used to. The first time you try to push the limits of your search by asking a complex question, such as “How many pizzas should I order for 22 people?” You might be surprised at the amount of text he gives you in response.
In response to my question about the amount of pizza, for example, the new Bing responded with a multi-paragraph answer that helped me take multiple approaches to estimate how much pizza I should order based on the number of people I needed to feed.
Similarly, when I asked him what are the system requirements to play Cyberpunk 2077 movie At 4K, Bing again wrote me a multi-paragraph answer that adequately explains how I can play the game at multiple levels of quality based on the components in my computer. It gave me some examples of what I needed to play the game in 4K well, obviously pulled from said websites.
The answer was formulaic, devoid of charm or personality, and even without the auto-generated quotes, evidently gleaned together from multiple sources on the Internet.
It was also completely usable and even, dare I say, useful.
But the new Bing doesn’t stop at chatting with you about your search queries. He can also take what you give him and act on it, and that includes remixing and creating new stuff based on what he knows.
So when I asked him for suggestions on what I should do during an upcoming trip to Amsterdam, for example, I was then able to follow it up by asking Bing to summarize his suggestions, then write it as an email I could send to my friends asking for their input. I could also ask her to do things like translate my itinerary into Spanish or write a poem about my travel plans, but I objected.
prospects
After spending an hour tinkering with the new and improved Bing, I can tell you that we’re only scratching the surface of what you can do with this tool. Get ready for the state of search to change quickly once this becomes widespread and more competitors start entering the market with their own AI-powered search tools.
And of course, the rapid (?) improvement in search quality for you and me is just one of the many reasons why this news is such a big deal for the tech industry. As I mentioned earlier, OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology has been criticized for being prone to error and spoofing, so incorporating it into something as a key to public information as search engines is bound to have serious implications for the future of society.
On a more personal level, it raises thorny questions about how much right a search engine has to pull information from the websites it indexes — and what happens to sites that lose traffic (and the attendant revenue from advertising and e-commerce deals) as a result of search engines like Bing I got smarter and more proactive in answering your questions.