A recent announcement at Microsoft’s Build 2023 summit revealed that Bing will be integrated into ChatGPT, enabling the platform to provide more accurate and relevant answers to user queries. The new feature will first be rolled out to users of ChatGPT Plus and will be made available to its free users through a plugin shortly. This development comes at a time when more companies are creating their own versions of AI search engines. Google, too, has hinted at integrating the capabilities of Bard with its popular search engine in the coming months. The scaling up of language models is slowly having a steady impact on the way humans interact with the internet and the content they find on it. The integration of Bing with ChatGPT will bring about significant changes to user experience and the overall utility of the application in itself, allowing users to know more about the information being provided on the interface.
Enhancing Bing search is also one of Microsoft’s top priorities as it revamps its available internet search options. These developments are bound to find their way to Microsoft’s assistants and copilots on their popular offerings such as Microsoft Office and the Windows operating system. Essentially connecting ChatGPT to the internet, Bing will be the default search engine functionality for OpenAI’s chatbot. While the Bing chatbot had prior access to the internet alongside its adoption of GPT-4, other users that preferred to stick to ChatGPT’s original interface will soon have access to a chatbot that is equipped with the necessary means to provide up-to-date and traceable information.
How Will Bing ChatGPT Integration Improve User Experience?
ChatGPT will effectively be connected to the internet, being able to provide users with sources of information.
ChatGPT’s Bing integration will bring about a much-awaited feature for users of generative AI, which will let them remain connected to the web as they interact with the chatbot. OpenAI and Microsoft have chosen to release a crucial feature that will make ChatGPT’s responses more up-to-date and in line with present information as opposed to its limited data set. With its responses grounded in web search results and data found on the internet, ChatGPT will be able to offer citations for the information it provides. This greatly simplifies the user experience for people that deploy the chatbot for information retrieval and other AI-based research purposes.
As far as education goes, this might come as a double-edged sword for educators and students. On one hand, it enhances the abilities of ChatGPT to provide more accurate information, while on the other, it leads to greater risks surrounding academic integrity. ChatGPT’s connection to the internet might also reduce the incidence of AI hallucination. This is due to the framework and language model being connected to direct sources of information as opposed to a plain extrapolation based on the training data set and user feedback. Microsoft’s Bing ChatGPT network will be expanded over time as the companies jointly intend on extending plugin support and integration to other tools offered by their firms. This will end up making both ChatGPT and Bing search more useful for users who have niche requirements when using these platforms. The decision comes at a time when tech rivalries alongside a global competition to develop chatbots and language model AIs are heating up. Russia’s Sberbank had recently announced GigaChat—the nation’s first attempt to develop an AI chatbot. Similarly, Chinese giant Alibaba too, announced Tongyi Qianwen—a project being developed by AliCloud to compete with other global firms developing chatbots and LLMs.
Expanding Bing Search’s Potential
Bing search is bound to witness further enhancement with plugins and interoperability with ChatGPT.
ChatGPT integrating Bing is especially significant as Microsoft moves toward a more interlinked ecosystem of chatbots, assistants, and copilots across all of its platforms. Enhanced plugin support will also mean that the company is looking to onboard other third-party features with its offerings to allow users a one-stop search destination and a smooth experience when browsing the internet. Edge, Microsoft’s browser, will also be connected into this unified network, which will allow just about every tool to carry the capabilities and imprints of AI. These rapid developments succeed demands of famed personalities who have requested a pause on the scaling of AI to prevent these systems from outcompeting their human creators. More interestingly, the integrated plugins platform will allow third-party creators to consistently submit their plugins to the interface. These plugins, too, will be streamlined across the Microsoft copilot and chatbot ecosystem. Such advancements will propel the deployment of and access to AI-generated content within a diverse set of applications.
Moreover, the enhanced capabilities of Bing Chat and now ChatGPT will allow users to get pointed recommendations on plugins based on conversations they have with these chatbots. The project comes right after Microsoft agreed to further its partnership with OpenAI. Both firms have worked with each other for a long duration. Plugin integration support and enhancement hints at Microsoft using the same framework as ChatGPT and the latter’s plugins, further enhancing the range of interoperability between Bing and ChatGPT platforms. The impact of these changes will be felt across the AI industry, with other firms also gearing toward enhancing interoperability in their offerings. However, OpenAI and Microsoft have a clear head start.
What Lies Ahead for the Bing Chatbot and ChatGPT
The futures of both Bing and ChatGPT seem promising due to the advantage of having gotten an early start.
Quick upscaling tactics and compounded improvements have allowed OpenAI and Microsoft to catapult their key services into a position of advantage over other competitors. As these tools become more popular with their users, educators and regulators will have to educate themselves in order to formulate an appropriate response with regard to academia’s overall position. Both partners are clearly inclined on furthering their assets and will continue to develop ChatGPT and Bing as key players in the world of search engines and language model AIs. Potent search capabilities might be one of the first steps humanity takes toward the development of artificial general intelligence, and the proliferation of these models’ capabilities will certainly remain interesting to watch. The influence of these tools on various human industries along with education still remains a developing situation. However, the emphasis on creating responsible AI must remain, allowing humans to safeguard learning outcomes and progress toward a balance between human intelligence and AI.