Microsoft revamps Bing search engine to use artificial intelligence
REDMOND, Wash. — Microsoft is relaunching its Bing search engine by incorporating leading artificial intelligence technology, a move that company executives hope will reshape how online search operates.
Microsoft is teaming up with OpenAI, the San Francisco research lab behind ChatGPT, to retool Bing in an attempt to unseat Google as the leader in searching the web.
"It's a new day for search," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in an announcement made at the company's headquarters on Tuesday. "In fact, a race starts today in terms of what you can expect."
The new Bing is now live for a "limited preview," with a more full-scale launch coming soon, executives said.
Microsoft's announcement that it is doubling down on what is considered the hottest new technology in the industry is a direct challenge to Google, which has dominated online search for decades.
Microsoft Executive Yusuf Mehdi provided a demonstration at a briefing with reporters of how Bing will operate.
More than just offer search results, the new Bing will be able to instantly create an itinerary for a vacation; offer ingredient substitutes in recipes; and annotate search results with links, citations and context on the right side of the search page.
It also allows users to ask questions and receive answers that sound conversational based on the latest news and information, unlike the publicly available version of OpenAI, which had limitations, since its information and data was built on a two-year-old model.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, told reporters that the AI powering Bing is using technology that is faster and more advanced that what the public has experienced so far, and that it has been fine-tuned by Microsoft to be optimized for search.
"I feel like we're been waiting this for 20 years, so I'm very excited it's here," Altman said. "I think this is the beginning of a very new era."
The global success of ChatGPT has put Google executives on edge and initiated what some internally have called "code red," an urgent push to find ways to counter popularity of a tool that has amassed tens of millions of users since just late last year.
Google offered a preview of its answer to ChatGPT on Monday. It's called Bard, an AI chatbot using Google's not-yet-public LaMDA chatbot. That technology set off a debate about bot sentience last year when a Google engineer went rogue and gave a journalist access to the until-then famously guarded tool.
In the coming week Bard will be more widely available to the public, said Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
"Bard can be an outlet for creativity, and a launchpad for curiosity," Pichai wrote in a Monday blog post.
Many analysts say the brewing wars over the future of AI in online search is setting up a clash between Microsoft and Google not seen since the two tech titans sparred over dominance in personal computers, the internet and smartphones.
Microsoft has invested $10 billion into OpenAI, which is now being integrated not just into Bing, but into Microsoft's whole suite of products, executives said on Tuesday.
"This technology is going to reshape pretty much every software category," said Microsoft CEO Nadella. [Copyright 2023 NPR]
