Microsoft’s AI-Powered Bing Comes to Google’s Bard-Powered Search

Microsoft has officially taken the lead in the race to build a search engine powered by generative AI. On Tuesday, the company debuted his rumored OpenAI-infused versions of his Bing search engine and Edge web browser, declaring them to be the next evolution of the internet. Not Google.

Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft, said in a statement:

Microsoft calls the new AI-powered Bing and Edge the internet’s “co-pilots.” With AI Bing, you can ask search engines questions and get AI-generated answers from sources on the Internet. AI Bing also lets you chat with search engines to refine or elaborate your searches. According to Microsoft, whether you’re planning an itinerary for a trip to Hawaii or preparing for your next job interview, the search engine can do it all. Dusty old traditional search results should also improve thanks to AI boosts to search algorithms that are supposed to return more accurate and relevant results. Meanwhile, the new Edge browser is also powered by AI and includes a sidebar that helps you summarize what you’re watching and write messages to post. An example from Microsoft is a post on LinkedIn owned by Microsoft. seamless!

Google was trying to get ahead of Microsoft’s announcement the day before. In a blog post authored by CEO Sundar Pichai, the company revealed that his ChatGPT competitor has been named “Bard” and will be available to the public in the coming weeks. Google also said it would integrate AI tools into search results “soon.”

On the surface, the Bard and the new Bing look pretty similar. But it’s hard to say without trying them out, and neither have been released to the public yet. But while Bard is currently built on a “lightweight” version of its generative chatbot, Microsoft says the new Bing will use an even more powerful version of ChatGPT, custom-designed for search. . Bard was featured in a short blog post, but Microsoft invited a bunch of journalists to a glamorous live event at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, to showcase AI-powered Bing and Edge. All this suggests that while one company thinks its AI search is ready for primetime, the other is trying not to be completely left out of the conversation. increase.

Microsoft also has a long way to go when it comes to making Bing a serious competitor to Google, the world’s most used search engine. Google is synonymous with his web search, a habit that’s hard to break. The new Bing has to offer something special to win Google users. The same can be said for Edge, given Chrome’s huge browser market share, which once belonged to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Not surprisingly, when Microsoft announced the new Bing, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was also on stage. Microsoft partnered with his OpenAI and invested his $13 billion in the company. The new Bing and Edge browsers are just a fraction of that investment, but they’re the most consumer-facing browsers ever. His OpenAI isn’t the only company to create large language model chatbots, but the company’s decision to expose his ChatGPT while Google and Meta forgo their own chatbots puts OpenAI in the lead. It looked like Now everyone else has to catch up. And now they are catching up with Microsoft too.

Microsoft is aware of that fact and seems to be having a lot of fun with it. At Tuesday’s event, several not-so-hidden shots were fired at Google, with Microsoft executives declaring that search hasn’t changed or advanced much in the past two decades. (Not really. Google’s search results pages are often filled with sidebars, answers, ratings, and maps that look a lot different than a simple list of links 20 years ago. ) Microsoft executives added that search is not. Works for most people, or as it should. It’s time to put innovation back in search, they said.

If you’d like to try out the new Bing for yourself, there’s a preview on our site where you can join the waitlist and be one of the first to try it out for yourself. Microsoft says it will roll out to “millions” of his desktop users in the coming weeks, with a mobile version coming “soon.”

As for which big tech companies have better AI-infused search engines, we’ll have to try them out. Both Microsoft and Google are trying to release their products as soon as possible. You don’t need a sophisticated generative AI chatbot to communicate the importance of being number one.