Microsoft Bing is Reportedly Getting a ChatGPT Upgrade

Microsoft is reportedly teaming up with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT features into Bing Search. OpenAI’s ChatGPT recently made headlines due to its impressive ability to generate human-like answers to questions written using natural language, and people on the Internet have been using it to create poems, lyrics, or essays.

“Microsoft is preparing to launch a version of its Bing search engine that uses the artificial intelligence behind ChatGPT to answer some search queries rather than just showing a list of links, according to two people with direct knowledge of the plans,” The Information reported. “Microsoft hopes the new feature, which could launch before the end of March, will help it outflank Google, its much bigger search rival.”

Even though Bing has been around since 2009, Microsoft’s search engine still had a tiny 3.03% market share in December 2022 according to Statcounter. Bing isn’t that bad compared to Google, but it still lacks a real killer feature that would help to grow its mindshare.

Could a ChatGPT integration be what Bing needs to finally be taken seriously as a Google alternative? ChatGPT is an impressive example of what artificial intelligence can do, but it’s still far from perfect. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI also pretty much acknowledged this state of fact last month.

“ChatGPT is incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness. It’s a mistake to be relying on it for anything important right now. It’s a preview of progress; we have lots of work to do on robustness and truthfulness,” the exec said.

ChatGPT is incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness.

it's a mistake to be relying on it for anything important right now. it’s a preview of progress; we have lots of work to do on robustness and truthfulness.

— Sam Altman (@sama) December 11, 2022

OpenAI made ChatGPT available for free public testing in November, but the chatbot still isn’t widely accessible. As of this writing, it’s currently down after too many people have been trying to access it at the same time. By teaming up with Microsoft, OpenAI may have found the right partner to make its AI technology available at scale.

Even though Google remains the default search engine for the majority of Internet users, the news of Microsoft Bing getting ChatGPT capabilities should make Google anxious. According to a recent report from the New York Times, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and other top company executives have identified ChatGPT as a “code red” threat for Google’s search business.