Microsoft may be gearing up to launch a version of its Bing search engine powered by the ChatGPT AI chatbot, according to a new report.
Information says the feature could be launched by the end of March. This is certainly plausible, given that Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019 – an investment that looks more and more astute as time goes on.
As we wrote last December, ChatGPT looks like it could currently make the first two years of school essays meaningless. (You can try it yourself, for free, to see if you agree.) ChatGPT not only serves as a source of information, but it can also create longer essays and arguments to support a thesis, as well as bring in additional facts from outside. sources. This is different from a traditional search engine, which usually aims to answer a simple question.
If Bing implemented a version of ChatGPT in their search engine, it would have a different effect; instead of directing users to third-party content, Bing collected it on its own. Typically, a search engine collects information from third parties and then links direct users to what we hope is an authoritative source of information. But search engines, including Bing and Google, are stealthily collecting more and more information on the search results page itself — from shopping links to images and general information — robbing other websites of traffic and revenue.
There is one more difference. If you’ve ever used a Google-powered smart speaker, you know that Google makes a clear effort to obtain information from a third-party site by naming the site in their response. In our experience, ChatGPT has never done this, and it’s not clear if it ever will. ChatGPT has an authoritative tone when answering questions, but its actual accuracy is sometimes questioned, and it’s never entirely clear what or who is directing its responses.
ChatGPT has improved over time, and the latest December version of the chatbot seems to prefer more precise and concise answers over longer arguments. Asking the same question twice will get the same answer, which is also typical of a search engine, not an AI art service that can use different seeds to get different interesting answers. All this could have been in preparation for search engine integration…or not.
However, according to StatCounter, Google owns about 88 percent of the US search engine market. Bing has just under 7 percent. Microsoft has already integrated artificial intelligence into the great Microsoft Designer app. Turning Microsoft’s prudent investment in artificial intelligence into a viable search update seems like a logical next step.