Last Tuesday, February 7th, Microsoft announced the incorporation of ChatGPT into its search engine, Microsoft Bing.
If in our previous article the possibility of incorporating this technology into Bing was set at a surprisingly short timeframe — end of March — that date has been blown away by today’s announcement of its immediate availability.
Google’s announcement, made on the same day, revealed the upcoming release of Bard as an accelerated response to Microsoft’s prior announcement of investing in OpenAI (though with little success). It is likely that the speed of Microsoft’s second announcement was, in turn, a response to Google’s first announcement.
ChatGPT is a conversational Artificial Intelligence based on GPT (Generative Pretrained Transformer) technology. GPT is a language model developed by OpenAI that uses deep learning and natural language processing to generate text.
GPT was trained on a large amount of text from the web and can now complete text fragments, answer questions, and generate complete text autonomously.
In this article we cover GPT technology and its implementation in ChatGPT in greater depth.
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How does Bing incorporate GPT technology?
As we mentioned in that article, Bing was the candidate to be the first Microsoft product to announce the incorporation of this technology. And, indeed, Microsoft confirmed this in its announcement.
Bing incorporates GPT technology to improve its results, making them more accurate and better aligned with the user’s search intent. Natural language processing (NLP) makes it possible to understand the context of the search and not just its literal meaning.
Secondly, Bing embeds ChatGPT, offering the same functionality as on the OpenAI website. However, in this case, ChatGPT interacts with the search results, refining the search based on your answers to questions posed.
Prometheus or GPT-4?
Until now, ChatGPT used GPT-3.5 technology, but Microsoft has announced that its improved version of this technology, called Prometheus, will be integrated into its products. This improvement promises an even more advanced natural language processing experience.
Some analysts believe that Prometheus would actually correspond to version 4 of GPT. This version has generated great expectations in the industry, as it is believed to represent a significant qualitative leap forward.
ChatGPT, yes, but with up-to-date information
The most important criticism levelled at ChatGPT, especially from Google’s sphere, was that the information it provided was outdated. Indeed, ChatGPT offered information available only up to 2021.
However, the application of GPT technology to Bing breaks this barrier. Applying the search engine to GPT makes it possible to have current information that is analysed and used by the Artificial Intelligence.
New version of Microsoft Edge
So far we have talked about Bing, Microsoft’s search engine. As the reader well knows, the search engine is independent of the browser and, although we usually use browser-search engine pairs from the same manufacturer, they can be combined according to the user’s preferences.
The new version of Microsoft Edge adds an additional layer of intelligence by providing a side menu through which we can access contextual information. OpenAI’s intelligence, in this case, adjusts according to the content of the browsing window. One example of this would be when, while browsing LinkedIn, the sidebar recognises the content of the main window and adapts to offer the drafting of a post in our feed according to our instructions, later refining it according to the tone we wish to give it.
A shift in the search engine paradigm?
Google quickly established itself as a search engine in the late ’90s. Its simplicity and greater effectiveness in search results gave it a rapidly dominant position in the market.
The growing interest in GPT and its association with Microsoft present a great opportunity for Bing to recover its position in the search engine market. However, this will largely depend on whether the very high expectations generated are met, and also on the future evolution of Bard.
How to access the new version of Bing and Edge
It is possible that, by the time you read these lines, weeks or months may have passed since publication and Bing may already openly incorporate GPT technology.
Until then, to access the new Bing and Edge you will need to request inclusion on the waiting list that Microsoft has created for this purpose. You can do so here.
If what you want is to download and try the new version of Microsoft Edge, you can do so here but, be careful! You must download the DEV version, which you will find by clicking on this banner.