New Bing With ChatGPT Brings The Power Of AI To Microsoft's Signature Search Engine

Bob O'Donnell | USA Today

While some technological innovations may be exciting at first, it is often difficult to see their impact in the real world. But when developments happen in something like internet search that we all use multiple times a day and the changes are dramatic, that's something that gets attention.

Such is the case with the latest version of Microsoft's Bing search engine, which is now powered by artificial intelligence, thanks to its connection to the most popular content creation tool ChatGPT. (You can read more about ChatGPT here.)

Instead of just a list of links to websites that might be relevant when you type a query, the new version of Bing can provide an easy-to-understand summary of all the information written in plain English (or more than 140 languages).

But, with CHATGPT in general, accuracy is not guaranteed.

What does Microsoft Bing do with ChatGPT?

Imagine going shopping for a big screen TV or planning your daily itinerary for a 5-day vacation (two real-life examples the company used in yesterday's demo) and getting everything you need to know. on a screen This is what this new version of Bing can do.

For TV, in addition to making recommendations, AI-powered Bing describes why it made the choices it made, important features, and more. It's a much better experience when clicking on multiple individual links to try to read and understand articles or product reviews together. In fact, you can even create a table comparing key specs if you ask.

The route is better. Give recommendations on where to go, eat and sleep, then provide important links to make reservations or buy tickets. The time saved is amazing and the quality of the experience is magical.

While this sounds pretty cool, there are a few key things. First, of course, is that Microsoft Bing has a small, single-digit share of the search market: the vast majority of people still use Google for their searches.

And not to be outdone, Google has already announced an improved AI and natural language version of Google's search engine called Bard, which will be available very soon, although it already has its challenges.

Also, the initial version of Bing advanced search only works on PC and Mac; A mobile version will come later.

Bing Queue

Microsoft is also launching a limited beta of the service, and you'll have to get on a waiting list before the company opens it up to millions of people. Also, while you don't need to use the updated Edge browser to use the experience, some features, including interactive chat features, are only available with it.

Finally, as with ChatGPT, not all summary data results are guaranteed to be completely accurate in this previous release; There may still be bugs.

However, what becomes apparent once you start using it is that Bing's AI-powered experience ends up making computers feel smarter and smarter. In other words, they understand what you want, not necessarily what you wrote.

How does the Bing algorithm work?

To make this experimental move a reality, Microsoft had to update several key technologies. The company not only expanded its partnership with OpenAI, the company that brought ChatGPT to market, but Microsoft also created its own AI model called Prometheus, leveraged Azure cloud computing infrastructure, and created a new version of the Edge browser.

Easily accessible through a new sidebar window in the Edge browser, the interactive chat portion of the ChatGPT-powered experience can produce the same amazing, original, condensed natural language content as the current version.

Want to refine the details of your recent search query, write an email summarizing the results, or read an easy-to-understand summary of your research topic?

The chat feature can do that and more in seconds. Even better, the version of ChatGPT used by Microsoft is an updated version that is not publicly available anywhere else.

However, the real power behind the experiment belongs to Prometheus. Although it is never seen as a user, it is still very early in the process. Their role is to identify the resources needed to best respond to the specific question/request you are formulating. By doing so, it regulates the flow of information through these elements. In particular, you can leverage an existing Bing search index and then use its capabilities to send relevant queries to ChatGPT, which generates an easy-to-read compact answer.

Although it may seem like a small internal detail, the combination means that you can enjoy the latest news and information together with ChatGPT's natural language capabilities in one solution.

This is very important because large language models like ChatGPT are trained on the same web data, but only up to a certain date, meaning they cannot access the latest information.

What Microsoft is doing with its Prometheus AI engine is leveraging Bing's traditional search and natural language response capabilities to create a modern, modern solution that combines the two.

If you're looking for a new and better way to search the web, the new Bing.com is worth a try. In fact, once you've tried it, you'll probably never want to go back to regular internet searches.

USA TODAY columnist Bob O'Donnell is president and principal analyst at TECHnalysis Research, a market research and consulting firm. You can follow him on Twitter @bobodtech.