11 Things to Know and 2 Questions About Microsoft's New Bing GPT Hybrid
Can we all agree to call it BingGPT for now?
Microsoft yesterday held an invite-only event in Redmond to reveal new product features powered by AI. Nilay Patel from The Verge quoted Satya Nadella saying, “The race starts today, and we're going to move and move fast. Most importantly, we want to have a lot of fun innovating again in search, because it's high time.”
Yusuf Mehdi, a corporate vice president at Microsoft and the consumer chief marketing officer, commented in a corporate blog post:
Today, we’re launching an all new, AI-powered Bing search engine and Edge browser, available in preview now at Bing.com, to deliver better search, more complete answers, a new chat experience and the ability to generate content. We think of these tools as an AI copilot for the web.
There are 10 billion search queries a day, but we estimate half of them go unanswered. That’s because people are using search to do things it wasn’t originally designed to do. It’s great for finding a website, but for more complex questions or tasks too often it falls short.
“The race starts today, and we're going to move and move fast. Most importantly, we want to have a lot of fun innovating again in search, because it's high time.” Satya Nadella, Microsoft
11 Things to Know About the New Bing
There will be a lot more to say about the new BingGPT when it does become more widely available. For now, we want to point out several items to be aware of related to the launch.
Below you will see some chat images from Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief at the Verge, from his running live blog commentary from Microsoft’s event. Some of his posts include the name of the journalist asking the questions. Several of his posts name Yusuf Medhi as answering the query. Here are 11 things to know about BingGPT as it is manifested today.
A Copilot for the web. Microsoft is positioning the new Bing as your copilot for the web. Features highlighted include better search, complete answers, a new chat experience, a creative spark, and updates to the Microsoft Edge browser. The “complete answers” and “new chat experience” are the conversational search features so many people have appreciated about ChatGPT. The “creative spark” isn’t a search feature at all. It is the other creative uses of ChatGPT that have wowed early users.
Join the waitlist. If you want access to the new Bing, you must join a waitlist. This is not available today except to a limited group for preview. Microsoft will move people off the waitlist as it rolls out.
Available now, but not really. “The new Bing is available today in a limited preview on desktop, and everyone can visit Bing.com today to try sample queries and sign up for the waitlist. We’re going to scale the preview to millions in the coming weeks. A mobile experience will also be in preview soon,” said Mehdi. It’s available when you are let off the waitlist.
Time to live on the edge. Initially, you will need to use the Microsoft Edge browser. This will be the biggest barrier to consumer trial. Statcounter says that Edge only has about 4.5% of the worldwide browser market share as of January 2023. It appears that other browsers, notably Chrome, will not be able to support BingGPT features without some upgrades. Apple and Mozilla are likely to support this in time, it is hard to see it getting prioritized at Chrome anytime soon. The good news for Microsoft is that BingGPT may be the incentive consumers need to try out the Edge browser. The bad news is that this will severely limit BingGPT’s reach in the near term. Yusuf’s “intentions” are far less important than reality.
A familiar search experience with a twist. Search results will be provided in a traditional link model and in a chat window on the right that provides a composed answer to the query.
Citations included. Results in the chat format will include citations and links. This is similar to Perplexity.ai, but it does not appear limited to five external links per answer.
Access current information. A significant critique of ChatGPT is that it does not know anything from the last 18 months. Microsoft is using a combination of models so that it can generate composed answers and also retrieve real-time information from a variety of sources. “We have developed a proprietary way of working with the OpenAI model that allows us to best leverage its power. We call this collection of capabilities and techniques the Prometheus model. This combination gives you more relevant, timely and targeted results, with improved safety,” said Mehdi. You should expect to hear a lot more about Prometheus in the future.
A lot more than search. The “creative spark” listed above includes several features, such as code completion, drafting emails and social media posts, and even creative writing.
How will Microsoft cover its costs and make money? Ads, of course. Despite the added features beyond search, BingGPT will be free to users. Microsoft will go with that tried and true model of an ad-supported service. This must make Google happy. When it integrates LaMDA into search, Google will certainly plan to deliver ads, and it will be a relief that the reinvigorated rival will be saddled with the same model.
Likely not all you can eat. There may be limits on the number of queries you can make. This is common in free and subscription-based generative AI solutions.
Conversational search is a core feature. Most of the BingGPT examples provided by Microsoft depict a single-turn interaction. However, the power is not just in the thoughtfully composed answer to a question. Conversational search is so attractive because it enables you to correct or refine a search easily without starting over.
2 Questions About the Future of BingGPT
Will Microsoft get enough people to use the Edge browser in order to try out BingGPT? This is an unexpected dependency. Interestingly You.com and Perplexity.ai seem to have figured out how to conduct conversational search via Chrome. Why not Microsoft? With that said, if Microsoft does get users to try out Edge to get access to BingGPT, it may offer a compounding benefit of rising user growth for both products.
What will win? A subscription or ad-supported model? BingGPT features look a lot like ChatGPT, and include a number of features common to AI writing assistants that connect to GPT-3 APIs. Will free win out over the comfort of a subscription?
Let me know what you think about BingGPT. It looks intriguing. However, some barriers to adoption will need to be overcome.
I wonder what metrics MSFT will use to measure “success”. Bing market share? Ad revenue? Complexity of questions asked/answered? BingGPT still beta; may take 24+ months to tune it for business use cases and broad acceptance. And the inevitable bad cyberactors that want bragging rights.
Agreed. BingGPT it is 😄