Microsoft gives Bing and Edge artificial intelligence

Microsoft has beaten Google to the punch. The search engine company had already extended an invitation to an event on artificial intelligence on 8 February. The Windows company, on the other hand, only issued an invitation on 6 February for an event on 7 February and announced news from the AI sector itself. Microsoft is enhancing its Bing search engine and Edge browser with an artificial neural network.

Microsoft wants nothing less than to reinvent search. To this end, the company has launched a co-pilot that no longer just searches for words, but understands specific questions - and tries to answer them. The company has released it with a major update for Bing and Edge. This is an improved version of ChatGPT, which is available online as a preview version. Interested users can join a waiting list at bing.com/new. The only requirement: a Microsoft account. In the coming weeks, Microsoft intends to steadily provide new users with access to Bing. A mobile app is also being planned.

What can the new AI search do?

In future, the new search will lead to a two-part display of results on Bing. The usual search results will be displayed on the left-hand side. On the right are the AI answer, the sources for it and a chat window for queries. There are also suggested further questions that are generated by the AI.

In the Edge browser, Microsoft integrates the co-pilot into a sidebar. The company can also imagine releasing a plugin one day so that the chat also works with other browsers. For example, you can use the sidebar to summarise a website that is currently open. Or compare a financial report with the competition in tabular form. The AI is also designed to support you when writing articles on the Internet.

The new Bing runs on an OpenAI model specially customised for search. Microsoft calls it the Prometheus model. During development, important findings from ChatGPT and GPT-3.5 were incorporated in order to allegedly obtain faster, more accurate and more powerful answers. The AI can use the internet to acquire new knowledge, which should lead to more targeted results. Microsoft has integrated the new AI model into the Bing search ranking engine, achieving what it claims is the biggest leap in relevance in two decades.

Together with OpenAI, Microsoft has integrated security precautions. This is intended to filter out harmful content such as misinformation, disinformation or discriminatory content.