Bing’s ChatGPT-Like Features In Action
Microsoft yesterday launched the new Bing web browser and Edge browser. It is powered by Microsoft’s Prometheus model and a next-gen OpenAI GPT modeling. Microsoft has now surpassed Google in bringing such a search experience to the masses. However, we will likely see more competition in the coming months. The new Bing has been available for us to test, and Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, stated that “It’s an exciting day for search.”
Microsoft has created a waitlist to block access to the new Bing, and its AI features. It is possible to sign up. Microsoft claims that it will make the next experience available to millions of users within the coming weeks. It’s also available in the developer version of Edge for Windows and Mac.
As you start using Bing, the first thing you will notice is that Bing now has a larger query prompt and more information for new users. It now asks you to “ask for anything” and it will. It will continue to use keywords, but it will give you better results if you ask it more open-ended questions.
Microsoft seems to have found the perfect balance between the old-school link-centric search results as well as the new AI features. It will often provide AI-powered results at the top of search results pages when you ask for facts. It will bring up more complicated answers in the sidebar. It will usually show three possible chat queries under those results (they look somewhat like Google’s Smart Chips within Google Docs), and then take you to the chat environment. The chat experience is dropped from the top of this page by a brief animation. You can swipe up or down to switch between them.
Sometimes, however, Bing may not realize that the new experience exists. This includes recipe searches. The company highlighted this in demos (“Give me a recipe for banana bread!”). Although you can still access the chat view to receive the new AI experience, it is sometimes confusing to see it for different queries. It is also difficult to predict when the new AI experiences will appear in the sidebar. Although there may be some searches that the new Bing experience doesn’t apply to, I believe users will expect it to appear in every search.
The results are excellent, although it was too easy for Bing to give offensive answers in my initial testing. I asked Bing some questions that were not clear from AI researchers, who tried them in ChatGPT. Bing answered most of the queries at least up to a point.
