Microsoft has added a tuned version of ChatGPT to its search engine Bing to help users find answers quickly and to dramatically change what it means to search online.
Key Details
- Half of the questions asked on search engines go unanswered, and Microsoft is trying to fix that by adding ChatGPT to its Bing search engine.
- Bing will now have a modified, more powerful version of the artificial-intelligence (AI) platform ChatGPT to potentially give better answers.
- The Bing version of the chatbot will also offer citations with the answers so users can fact-check the bot and ensure it is not false information.
- The new Bing service is being rolled out slowly for a limited public preview, with plans to be available to everyone in the weeks ahead.
Why it’s important
AI has become mainstream—with ChatGPT earning more than 100 million subscribers since it debuted in November. Venture capital and tech companies have poured money into existing AI businesses, not wanting to get left behind the wave of AI.
Microsoft—which invested $10 billion in ChatGPT owner OpenAI—is changing the typical search engine and accelerating the demand for AI technology by adding ChatGPT to its Bing search engine.
Now users who ask a question on Bing will also be presented with the option to use AI to answer questions. The AI technology will gather and present the information to the user quickly and efficiently.
Millions of questions go unanswered daily as users can’t find what they are looking for on the internet. To change that, Microsoft chose to add ChatGPT to get the information for the users.
“Half of the 10 billion queries are going unanswered today, or at least without very good answers,” says Microsoft executive Yusuf Mehdi.
ChatGPT isn’t always correct as it uses a collection of everything on the internet to answer its questions and can sometimes give false information. To help with that, Microsoft has modified the chatbot to provide a list of citations so users can fact-check where it got its answers.
Given the quick rise in popularity of ChatGPT, adding the service to Bing could threaten Google. Google remains traditional, where users have to sift through pages to find answers, but now that an easier way has been presented, Microsoft could begin to eat into Google’s numbers.
The new Bing service is being rolled out slowly for a limited public preview, with plans to be available to everyone in the weeks ahead.
