It’s been three months since Microsoft’s Bing Chat was born, but it always feels like it’s been around longer, and that’s because Bing Chat itself is part of a larger AI revolution that’s already sweeping the web, including Of course, it also includes GPT-4, ChatGPT, and even Google’s Bard. Despite its relatively short existence, Microsoft says now is the time for the next version of Bing AI to roll out.
Microsoft reveals five upcoming feature improvements to Bing Chat
According to Microsoft statistics, in the three months since Bing Chat was capped, users have started 500 million conversations and created 20 billion images, and unsurprisingly, its usage continues to grow, with the Bing mobile app App downloads are also on the rise. Now, it’s time for some really big improvements.
Bing Chat will remain open in the sidebar
The first thing you can do is keep it open while using Bing Chat. Microsoft says that this feature is the result of strong demand from users, because it no longer needs to jump from window to window to chat, allowing you to chat at the same time. Interact with it in two places, making usage more natural.
Bing Chat will start responding with images and videos
If you ask Bing Chat for something, it might respond with a photo or video that isn’t AI-generated but found on the web. For example, if you ask Bing Chat how to bake chocolate chip cookies, it might give you a text recipe, along with a video of someone baking a cookie, or a photo of some delicious cookies. There are plenty of examples like this, but more importantly, if you can add visuals, they will happen. As for how to prioritize the order of photos and videos found on the Internet, because it is only Bing’s search results, so if you see a video on Bing Chat, it will be the first result you see after searching on Bing videos.
View and export chat history
This is obviously a strange request, but then Bing Chat will track your chat history next. In this way, you can review the old chat records in the past, and even continue the conversation from the place where you left off last time, but you are still limited to 20 replies to a single question. You can also rename and organize them. The idea is that Bing Chat may provide you with valuable information, so you can keep it, and you can also choose to export it in formats such as Word or PDF. Note, however, that the exported content will not include photos and videos.
You will be able to upload images via Bing Chat
There are few details about this feature, which allows you to upload an image through Bing and have it talk to you, but it will be very interesting if it goes live.
Third-party plugins are coming
If you think Bing Chat is too limited, the good news is that developers will be able to add extensions next, and the demonstration case provided by Microsoft is OpenTable. You can ask Bing what the five best restaurants near you are, and you can make restaurant reservations with just a click, and even specify that you want to be at a restaurant that has a spot during your chosen time. This is a major change for Microsoft, which, as the company mentioned in a blog post, is transforming Bing Chat from a product to a platform.