As expected, Microsoft presented yesterday a new version of its flagship search engine Bing that will be powered by the revolutionary technology created by OpenAI to redefine how users browse the web.
In an event held at the company’s headquarters in Washington, the Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft (MSFT), Satya Nadella, took the stage to reveal the all-new Bing search engine and Edge web browser.
“It’s an exciting time in tech… I think that this technology is going to shape pretty much every software category”, he told the audience.
The speeches lasted about an hour and, aside from Nadella, some other top executives involved in the project intervened to explain the new features that were added to these two products.
More Details About the New Bing Search Engine and Edge Web Browser
The new Bing search engine is already available to be tested by users who visit the website “Bing.com”. However, it can only be used with some sample queries that the firm has created to showcase what the AI-powered solution can do.
Users can tell the chatbot to “create a 3-course menu” or they can ask for help to find a big fast car or locate a music festival. Once the user clicks on any of these prompts, the system starts to write highly insightful and thoroughly conceived answers that are progressively displayed above the typically matching websites that search engines come up with whenever a user looks for something on the web.
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The usual small search box that was previously used to input keywords that the search engine could use to find these websites has been exchanged for a larger box that supports up to 1,000 characters. Users can add as much context and details to their queries as they need so the AI chatbot can provide the most accurate answers possible.
Those who would like to give Bing a try once the final version is released can join a waitlist. To do this, they will have to either log into their Microsoft or Skype account or they can create a new account in case they don’t have one.
Nadella emphasized that Microsoft is seeing a future where people will get accustomed to using these “conversational intelligent agents” that become the co-pilots of their experience with virtually any kind of software.
The company promised that the full version of Bing will be available over the coming weeks for desktops while the beta version of a mobile experience will also be launched pretty soon.
The Race to Dominate This Up-and-Coming Trend Has Just Started
The head of the tech company emphasized that a race has started, possibly referring to the fierce competition between his firm and Alphabet (GOOG) to create AI-powered products and solutions that may revolutionize multiple segments of the web.
“A race starts today in terms of what you can expect and we are gonna move, we are gonna move fast and for us every day we want to bring out new things”, Nadella asserted.
According to Microsoft, 10 billion searches are performed on the internet every day and they estimate that at least half of them go unanswered as current technology is not designed to come up with answers. Instead, it is focused on finding websites that contain some of the keywords that the user is looking for.
However, it is not just search that the company is focusing on. Instead, Microsoft is also looking to make Bing’s AI-powered chatbot the go-to virtual assistant for its users. They can not just look for answers, they can also use the technology as a source of inspiration, a travel agent, a research partner, an idea hub, and much more.
This new software is powered by OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 language model and is overseen by Microsoft’s Prometheus – a technology created by the company to make the most out of ChatGPT.
Just a few hours before, Alphabet announced the launch of a beta version of its brand-new AI-powered chatbot called Bard. The Mountain View-based tech firm has rushed to get the product out in response to the rise in popularity of OpenAI’s solution – ChatGPT – which attracted as many as 100 million monthly active users in just a couple of months.
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