Microsoft has reinvented itself by launching an all-new, Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered Bing search engine and Edge browser.
The tools used by billions of people every day are available in preview now at the firm’s official website, “To deliver better search, more complete answers, a new chat experience and the ability to generate content”
The firm states that these tools are AI copilots for the web.
“AI will fundamentally change every software category, starting with the largest category of all – search. Today, we’re launching Bing and Edge powered by AI copilot and chat, to help people get more from search and the web,” said Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft, Satya Nadella.
The tech firm noted that there are 10 billion search queries a day, but half of them go unanswered 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.”
Microsoft has assured all its users that the new Bing and Edge will ensure better search, complete answers, a new chat experience, a creative spark and a new Microsoft Edge experience.
The company noted that the new Bing is running on a new, next-generation OpenAI (AI research and deployment company) large language model that is more powerful than ChatGPT and customized specifically for search.
“It takes key learnings and advancements from ChatGPT and GPT-3.5 – and it is even faster, more accurate and more capable.”
Microsoft has developed a proprietary way of working with the OpenAI model that allows the firm 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.”
Microsoft has also applied the AI model to its core Bing search ranking engine, which led to the largest jump in relevance in two decades.
It says with this AI model, even basic search queries are more accurate and more relevant.
The tech firm is reimagining how one interacts with search, browser and chat by pulling them into a unified experience. This will unlock a completely new way to interact with the web.
Microsoft has committed to building Azure into an AI supercomputer for the world and has partnered with OpenAI, which has used this infrastructure to train the breakthrough models that are now being optimized for Bing.
In a statement, Microsoft noted, “Together with OpenAI, we’ve also been intentional in implementing safeguards to defend against harmful content. Our teams are working to address issues such as misinformation and disinformation, content blocking, data safety and preventing the promotion of harmful or discriminatory content in line with our AI principles.”
The launch marks the years-long effort of Microsoft to ensure that its AI systems are responsible by design.
“We will continue to apply the full strength of our responsible AI ecosystem – including researchers, engineers and policy experts – to develop new approaches to mitigate risk.”
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.
The company will scale the preview to millions in the coming weeks and a mobile experience will also be in preview soon.
“We’re excited to put the new Bing and Edge into the real world to get the critical feedback required to improve our models as we scale,” noted the firm.