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Microsoft is holding a surprise and secret launch event at its headquarters in Redmond on Tuesday, February 7. It could be that Bing ChatGPT integration is coming out to party or something else, we just don’t know yet.
Windows 11’s parent company sent out invitations to a select group of tech media and analysts last week, but – after some possible leaks – won’t let everyone talk about it until today.
In the invitation, the company says it is “sharing progress on a few exciting projects” and that CEO Satya Nadella will lead the discussion. What’s missing here is, well, a couple of things. The company has no plans to live stream the event; it also provides zero information about the types of products, projects or even product categories that will be discussed.
What we do and don’t know
What we do know is that there will be hands-on demos. That could be hardware like a Microsoft Surface Duo 3 smartphone. But with the recent apparent Bing ChatGPT leaks, many people are betting we’ll see an AI-inseminated search engine instead.
As described by Owen Yin (opens in new tab) (through The edge (opens in new tab)), which was given brief access to what could be the next generation of Microsoft’s search engine, Bing would integrate a very ChatGPT-like interface that could accept natural language queries and return some very clever results. The default Bing search engine would live on alongside the AI integration based on this possible leak.
The news from Microsoft comes just as Google unveiled its ChatGPT rival, Bard AI, in a very limited release, but with the promise that it’s coming to Google Search soon.
Surface products, the laptop kind for that matter, are unlikely. The company rolled out its entire new Surface line, including the Surface Pro 9 5G, Surface Laptop 5, and Surface Studio 2 Plus, less than four months ago. Also unlikely to have anything to do with the Microsoft Hololens, a mixed reality headset and part of the company that now appears to be picking up steam.
However, we have good news. Whatever Microsoft and Nadella are up to tomorrow, TechRadar will be on the scene. Your intrepid reporter has an invitation and is on his way there. We’ll share more details as we get them. Make sure to sign up with TechRadar and this reporter’s Twitter feed (opens in new tab) for live details.