Microsoft Starts Rolling Out Contextual Chat in Bing and More

Microsoft has started rolling out the various Bing updates it announced earlier this month when it removed the waitlist for its Bing chatbot. It’s now been a little more than 3 months since Microsoft made its AI-powered Bing available in preview, and the new features rolling out today include chat history, contextual search, and more.

“There’s never been more excitement for Bing mobile; we’re seeing an 8x increase in daily downloads since launching the new Bing as people worldwide incorporate their AI copilot on the go,” said Divya Kumar, Global Head of Marketing, Search & AI at Microsoft. “To make those mobile experiences even richer, we’re introducing new features coming soon to the Bing, SwiftKey, Edge, and Skype apps.”

Here are the new Bing features that are starting to roll out today.

Richer chat experience: Bing users will now see more visual search results in chat conversations including videos, knowledge cards, graphs, and more. Bing users can also share their conversations with the chatbot on social media.

Chat history: Bing users on mobile can now hit a new clock button to check their latest interactions with the chatbot. They can also continue mobile conversations on the desktop and vice versa.

Bing chat widget on mobile: The Bing app for iOS and Android now lets users add a widget to access the chatbot right from their home screen.

Compose messages in Swiftkey: Microsoft’s Swiftkey keyboard for iOS and Android now lets users draft a message with a specific tone, format, and length. The keyboard is also getting a built-in AI-powered translator.

Contextual chat in Edge mobile: Microsoft Edge for iOS and Android will soon let users ask questions about the web page they’re viewing and summarize its content. Moreover, Edge users will be able to highlight text on a webpage and ask Bing questions about it.

Bing in Skype group chats: All Skype users can now add the Bing chatbot to group chats and allow all participants to interact with it.

Microsoft is planning to announce more Bing updates at its Build conference on May 23-25. “We will share more about how developers can take advantage of the Bing AI platform to broaden their reach and bring new benefit to everyone across PC and mobile,” Kumar teased today.