Microsoft Taps ChatGPT to Boost Bing—and Beat Google

Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, is getting an AI refresh. At the company’s campus in Redmond, Washington, today, executives unveiled a new version of Bing incorporating technology behind startup OpenAI’s viral chatbot ChatGPT. The updates will see Bing results include smooth, written responses to queries that summarize information found on the web, and the addition of a new chatbot interface for complex queries. 

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, claimed the new features signal a paradigm shift for search. “In fact, a new race starts today,” he said. Nadella is right: Google announced on Monday that it will roll out its own rival chatbot, a product called Bard, although it will not initially be part of Google Search.

Microsoft executives said that a limited version of the AI-enhanced Bing would roll out today, though some early testers will have access to a more powerful version in order to gather feedback. The company is asking people to sign up for a wider ranging launch, which will occur in the coming weeks.

The new version of Bing uses the language capabilities developed by OpenAI to add a sidebar to the usual list of links that offers a written response to a query. In a demonstration, the query, “Will the Ikea Flippen loveseat fit into my 2019 Honda Odyssey if I fold down the seats?”, created an AI-powered response that used details about the love seat’s measurements and the SUV’s cargo space drawn from webpages to estimate that the furniture “might fit with the second or third rows folded.”

The response also included a disclaimer: “However, this is not a definitive answer and you should always measure the actual items before attempting to transport them.” A “feedback box” at the top of each response will allow users to give a response a thumbs up or a thumbs down, helping Microsoft train its algorithms. Google yesterday demonstrated its own use of text generation to enhance search results, to summarize different viewpoints.