Microsoft’s Bing search engine gets chatbot tech

REDMOND, Wash. — Microsoft is fusing ChatGPT-like technology into its search engine Bing, transforming an internet service that now trails far behind Google into a new way of communicating with artificial intelligence.

The revamping of Microsoft’s secondplace search engine could give the software giant a head start against other tech companies in capitalizing on the worldwide excitement surrounding ChatGPT, a tool that’s awakened millions of people to the possibilities of the latest AI technology.

Along with adding it to Bing, Microsoft is also integrating the chatbot technology into its Edge browser, company officials said Tuesday.

Microsoft said a public preview of the new Bing will launch Tuesday for users who sign up for it, but the technology will scale to millions of users in coming weeks.

The strengthening partnership with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI has been years in the making, starting with a $1 billion investment from Microsoft in 2019 that led to the development of a powerful supercomputer specifically built to train the San Francisco startup’s AI models.

While it’s not always factual or logical, ChatGPT’s mastery of language comes from having ingested a huge trove of digitized books, Wikipedia entries, instruction manuals, newspapers and other online writings.

The shift to making search engines more conversational — able to confidently answer questions rather than offering links to other websites — could change the advertising-fueled search business, but also poses risks if the AI systems don’t get their facts right.

Their opaqueness also makes it hard to source back to the human-made images and texts they’ve effectively memorized.