Microsoft is working to incorporate OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology in its Bing search engine, as per The Information. According to the report, Microsoft hopes to launch the new feature before the end of March in a bid to make Bing more competitive with Google. By using the technology behind ChatGPT — which is built by AI company OpenAI — Bing could provide more humanlike answers to questions instead of just links to information.
ChatGPT brought conversational AI to the mainstream last year, letting users create poems, compose college essays, write code, and even shave hours off their work. Microsoft made a $1 billion investment in OpenAI in 2019, and the two companies have been collaborating on integrating GPT into Bing since then. OpenAI, the AI research shop backed by a $1 billion investment from Microsoft, publicly released ChatGPT for users to test in November. The chatbot’s ability to spout everything from cocktail recipes to authentic-seeming school essays has since catapulted it into the spotlight. GPT could also help Bing do a better job of suggesting other keywords users could type to see answers to related searches, this person said.
Google has been using various large AI language models to improve its search engine subtly for years, though. Microsoft’s use of ChatGPT-like functionality could help Bing to compete with Google’s Knowledge Graph. Knowledge Graph allows users to search for things, people or places that Google knows about—landmarks, celebrities, cities, sports teams, buildings, geographical features, movies, celestial objects, works of art and more—and instantly get information that’s relevant to your query.
Google has been working on similar technology such as Chat GPT, but has been slow to make it publicly available due to ‘reputational risks’. However, CEO Sundar Pichai has reportedly grown concerned in recent weeks, declaring ChatGPT a “code red” moment for the company, as per the New York Times.
It’s worth noting that OpenAI intends to charge for ChatGPT in the future, like the fees it charges programmers who use GPT to create text-generating bots.
