Microsoft Launches AI-Powered Bing Chatbot To Everyone, And Giving It Massive Updates

The AI field was rather quiet, peaceful, and everyone seemed to care only for their own selves.

That significantly changed when OpenAI introduced ChatGPT. Since then, everyone started scrambling for their own solutions, with some opted to partner with OpenAI, while some others prefer to develop their own in-house product to compete.

Microsoft is the former, simply because it's one of the largest backers of OpenAI.

After embedding the chatbot to Bing, made headlines due to the AI being emotional at time, before finally fixing it, and launching it so users can experiment with it, and benefit from it.

This time, Microsoft is going full force.

Doing everything with confident, Microsoft is finally opening the AI up to everyone who wishes to use it, and even gave it huge updates to make it even more powerful and useful

Since the chatbot was introduced to Bing, over half a billion chats were conducted, said Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate Vice President. And because of that, Bing is ready for more. And that is by announcing 5 main points:

1. Eliminating the waitlist for Bing Chat by going from a "Limited Preview" to an "Open Preview." What this means, the only requirement is using Microsoft's Edge browser, and logged in into a Microsoft account
2. Gaining more visual answers for Bing Chat with rich images and videos. Here, Microsoft improved the formatting and layout, adding more rich images and rich videos, and also by adding charts and graphs when relevant.
3. Offering a multi-session experiences with new chat history and persistent chats within the Edge browser. This way, users can use the chatbot, and then pick up where they left of on other device using Bing’s chat history.
4. Exporting and sharing Bing Chats. This can be done through the share icons at the top of the window, where users can share their chats to social media, or move them into tools, like Microsoft Word.
5. Developer access to build third-party apps on top of Bing Chat.

These features should make Bing's chatbot a lot more powerful and useful.

But the highlights here, showcased how Microsoft wants the chatbot to also emphasize visuals, and not just test prompts.

Bing Chat can deal with various visuals, photos, and graphics - completely on its own. These are similar to what is already available in traditional Bing search, where Knowledge cards and “visual” search results will appear.

Then, there is the multimodal support, which would allow Bing to receive visual input rather than just text. This feature was announced for GPT-4, and would come to Bing as well.

This feature is similar to visual search, except backward. With the feature, Bing Chat should be able to analyze and interact with images in the same way it can with text.

In addition to prompting Bing Chat with an image, users should also be able to insert a link and ask a question that’s contextually related to what’s in the image or link.

With Microsoft going full force, the tech titan isn't forgetting its Edge browser, the only browser where Bing Chat is accessible, at least initially.

Because of this, Microsoft had the urge to also improve the web browser.

This time, Microsoft that has tied Bing Chat to Edge from the very beginning, is giving Edge a bunch of new AI-specific features.

Announcing the news in a blog post, Microsoft quoted CEO Satya Nadella, saying that:

Initially in beta, they include Copilot in Edge with the ability to "organize my tabs," which automatically pulls them into groups based on content and context. Users an also ask Bing to change their browser settings, or even summarize and analyze long documents or websites open in the browser.

This deep integration into Edge allows Bing Chat to interact with live content on the web.

Alongside the new AI features, Microsoft is also improving Edge with a bunch of visual refresh, which include floating tabs with rounded corners, semitransparent elements, and an overall more streamlined look.