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Welcome to the AI Wars. Not the kind we imagined where Skynet launched a surprise missile strike on its creators, but one where companies all compete to be the dominant source of your artificial intelligence connection. To put this powerful technology within reach of you and everyone else. And at the tip of this spear, somewhat unexpectedly, are Microsoft and Bing.
However, here’s the crazy thing. Having seen and tried out Microsoft’s new Bing search engine and its powerful chatbot, which Microsoft unveiled Tuesday at an event in Redmond, Washington, I think Microsoft has just won the first skirmish of this crucial battle for tech dominance. This could hardly be Bing’s moment. And by “moment” I mean when you finally start to realize or care that Microsoft has had its own search engine for over a decade.
You may want to start using Bing. At least once you can access the first iteration of Bing and its new chatbot, which thankfully I now have access to.
New look, new AI powers
I know, Microsoft’s announcement of a new Chatbot-enhanced search engine comes just 24 hours after Google unveiled its ChatGPT rival Bard and plans to reinvent its own much more popular search engine. But here’s the difference. Google’s Bard is available soon. The new Bing is here now, and it works the way you’d want and expect an “Ask me anything” search engine to work.
In some ways, the new Bing is a lot like the old Bing, but it’s not. The desktop version, which is available now and will be followed by a mobile version, does not hide or force AI chat.
Of course the interface looks different. There’s a new “Chat” option in the menu, and you can even switch between the main search screen and one dedicated entirely to the chatbot. Back on the search screen, the search box is much larger and can accommodate up to 1000 characters for just about any natural language question you can think of.
You can — and I did — type pretty much anything you want into that space. Microsoft says most people type an average of 2.4 words into a search box, but that’s within the parameters and bounds of a typical search engine. To be clear, Microsoft is not reinventing the wheel here. Most people already type long queries into Google Search and get decent keyword-based results. However, the new Bing takes this idea a step further.
Ask everything
As we typed our various searches, including a vanity search on moi and longer questions like questions about baking blueberry muffins for someone who is allergic to gluten and milk, Bing collected the standard fare like Wikipedia results about me and muffin recipes from various sites for gourmets. If you were to just look at the center of the screen you might assume nothing has changed, but populating slightly more slowly on the right is a new box full of more conversation results from Bing’s chatbot.
The results are like its ChatGPT cousin, but not either. Microsoft basically took OpenAI’s work on ChatGPT and, with OpenAI’s help, iterated, put the formidable power of Azure Cloud Services behind it, and combined it with Bing’s knowledge graph to create what it calls the Prometheus model.
Going deeper and deeper
In any case, the chat result expanded the results into more detail, and since it’s conversational, that first result could only be the start of a longer conversation. During my vanity survey, we got the details about my career, but then we asked the chatbot if I had ever won any awards. It found the ones I did and the ones I did second (that’s for that memory, new Bing).
At the bottom of that right chat box result is a “Let’s Chat” button that allows you to deepen the question with additional questions.
On my baking question, I was specifically given details on how to find ingredients that wouldn’t bother my allergic friend. What is striking about some, but not all, of these results is how, unlike ChatGPT, every reference is quoted in its place. I only had to hover over it to see the source or click through to visit the origin page.
In the chat screen, each result returns additional guiding questions for you to search further. When I started a quest about training my quads without hurting my back (I lied and told Bing I was injured last summer), Bing responded by telling me how bad it was that I hurt my back, adding: “Hope you’re feeling better 😊 Building your quadriceps, or quadriceps femoris, can be challenging if you have back pain, but there are some exercises that can help you without hurting your back…” then suggested one long list of well-cited exercise options for. The list was extensive and full of quotes.
It’s early days
However, we’ve already seen some results that don’t include a reference, as a colleague did about exercise options that were link-free, despite recommending a few different workout options. The concern here would be that the chatbot didn’t even factor in the possibility that the searcher couldn’t handle that kind of activity.
Still, it’s early days for the new Bing and the whole point of AIs is that they learn (or can be trained) and keep getting better. In addition, the system has a feedback mechanism, so you can call out inaccurate answers. You do this by selecting dislike, but you can get more detailed by adding some details and a screenshot in a feedback box. I would like to see the ability to select the exact offending text, right click and select “this is inaccurate”. Maybe in a future version.
Still, the beauty of what Microsoft has built here is the first fully integrated search AI. Not only is it elegant and useful (in the Microsoft Edge integration you can ask Bing Chat to summarize a page for you), but as is often the case with the best new AI tools, it’s also fun .
It also does what we probably always wanted to do with search, direct us to the best result. Google may have the most powerful and comprehensive knowledge graph, but an initial search won’t necessarily yield the results you want. So you reformulate your search. It’s a series of stops and starts until you get the best result. With the addition of Bing Chat, search becomes a funnel where additional context and questions can narrow the focus until you get the best result.
Granted, there are concerns about abuse, but because Microsoft has built this on top of the already strong foundation of its oft-ignored search engine, the chat inherits Bing’s gifts and ability to cut down on bad, old, false, and harmful information.
I’m sure it won’t be foolproof because AI rarely is. Still, ChatGPT has been such a sensation not only because it is so powerful and easy to use, but also because it has mostly managed to avoid the biases and poor judgment that have plagued so many of the previous chatbots.
Put another way, Microsoft combined a seasoned search engine with what’s arguably the best consumer AI, improving both and building something brand new that anyone can use without any training.
And they did it for Google.