Bing AI chatbot is about to get two much-wanted features
Bing AI is getting a couple of the most-wanted features folks have been badgering Microsoft for, with image search rolling out to everyone imminently, and dark mode shouldnât be too far behind that.
These nuggets of info come from Mikhail Parakhin, Microsoftâs head of Advertising and Web Services, who shared the details in a couple of tweets.
OK, we have finally rolled out the Multimodal/Image understanding everywhere (well, almost – the rollout will fully be done tomorrow, but 99% today). pic.twitter.com/CIuGIXQNSKJuly 18, 2023
Weâre told that multimodal/image understanding is rolling out to everyone, meaning the ability to drop an image into the chatbot and have it identify the photo (whatever it may be â a famous building, for example).
Also known as Visual Search (or Bing Vision), Microsoft just penned a blog post on this noting that itâs ârolling out now for consumers on Bing desktop and the mobile appâ.
As you can see from Parakhinâs tweet, Visual Search should be fully rolled out as of today, so you should see the feature later on at some point, if you donât already.
In the replies to the above highlighted Twitter conversation, Parakhin further tweeted about a second piece of functionality for Bing AI that folks have been clamoring for with even greater eagerness than image searching, in some cases.
That would be dark mode, and weâre told that this capability should arrive for Bing AI in a âcouple of weeksâ, so hopefully pretty soon indeed.
Analysis: Dark times are coming â or maybe already here?
There has been a lot of prodding and poking of Microsoft about providing a dark mode for Bing AI, so itâs great to see this arrive. Interestingly, some users are already reporting that they have dark mode â so perhaps we can expect this very soon for the chatbot, hot on the heels of the full rollout of Visual Search.
Microsoft is making fast progress with its Bing AI, with various nifty bits of functionality coming in at a good pace. Another much-requested feature thatâs due to arrive in the near future is a âno searchâ option thatâll come in handy in certain situations. (This forces an answer direct from the AI, without it scraping data from the web as part of its reply to a query).
Bing AI needs Microsoft to continue driving forward, mind you, as Bard, the rival AI from Google, might have got off to a poor start, but itâs rapidly making up ground with new features now. With Bard set to get extensions brought into the mix soon, there may be some defectors to Googleâs AI â something Microsoft will clearly be desperate to avoid.
However, what Microsoft needs to be careful about, of course, is annoying folks by doing its usual badgering tricks in Windows 11 to try and get people to use the AI (and other services for that matter).