Microsoft is planning to launch a version of its search engine Bing using artificial intelligence. Search engines have increased focus after the OpenAI-launched chatbot ChatGPT.
Microsoft could launch the new feature before the end of March, and hopes to challenge Alphabet-owned search engine Google.
OpenAI made its latest creation ChatGPT chatbot available for free public testing on Nov. 30. The chatbot is a software application designed to mimic human-like conversation based on user prompts and can respond to a large range of questions while imitating human speaking styles.
Since OpenAI released ChatGPT, there has been a lot of speculation that it will kill the google search engine. According to The New York Times, Google’s management has declared a “code red” and is scrambling to protect its online search monopoly.
ChatGPT is very good at answering questions. It is almost like you’re talking to a person that has spent hundreds of years absorbing knowledge. Its output is fluid and grammatically correct, and it can even mimic different styles of speech.
Google retained an 83% share of the search market in 2022, while Bing can only boast 9% of search volume.
Microsoft had in 2019 backed San Francisco-based artificial intelligence company OpenAI, offering $1 billion in funding. The two had formed a multi-year partnership to develop artificial intelligence supercomputing technologies on Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing service.
History of Bing:
Microsoft Bing originally launched MSN Search in 1998, using search results from Inktomi. It consisted of a search engine, index, and web crawler. Microsoft decided to make a large investment in web search by building its own web crawler for MSN Search, the index of which was updated weekly and sometimes daily.
The upgrade started as a beta program in November 2004, and came out of beta in February 2005. This occurred a year after rival Yahoo! Search rolled out its own crawler too. Image search was powered by a third party, Picsearch. The service also started providing its search results to other search engine portals in an effort to better compete in the market.
