The balance, three months after the launch of the new versions of the search engine and browser, can only be considered positive, despite some (predictable) initial hiccups: over half a billion chats in which users have participated to obtain targeted answers their questions, more than 200 million images generated with Image Creator, more than 100 million daily active users on Bing and a four-fold growth since the launch of the mobile app’s daily installs. And since the search engine was integrated into the Windows system tray, making it much more accessible, it has reached over half a billion people every month. Very indicative numbers are those that can be read in the post published today by Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate Vice President and Consumer Chief Marketing Officer of the Redmond company, numbers that reaffirm the importance of the decisive breakthrough in artificial intelligence (see the billionaire investment in Open AI ) operated by the North American company
The new arrivals
Microsoft speaks of Edge as a co-pilot for the Web and a new frontier of search tools, reiterating how its goal is to solve a universal problem of traditional search engines: almost half of all searches for information on the Web , Mehdi writes about it, does not find an answer and consequently the online activities of billions of people are not successful. The new Bing was created precisely to remedy this problem, promising superior ease of use thanks to the possibility of chatting in natural language by combining large linguistic models such as GPT-4, the latest addition to Open AI. Searches based on next-generation artificial intelligence, in Microsoft’s vision, are defined by opening Bing to a greater number of people and therefore by moving from Limited Preview to Open Preview which eliminates the waiting list (just access Bing simply with your Microsoft account), from switching from a text-only search and chat to a more visual one with rich image/video responses, and from one-time search/chat sessions to multi-session productivity experiences with history chats within Edge. All seasoned by the opening of the platform for the benefit of developers and third parties.
A more visual and more productive search
The new Bing, as Mehdi points out again, will bring the visual experiences of search directly into the Bing chat with the ultimate goal of helping users find the information they want more easily. The integration of Image Creator was the first step and now what Microsoft officially announces is its extension to all languages known by the search engine (more than 100) to further facilitate the creation of images. At the same time, the redesign process of the Edge browser is taking shape and substance: as stated in the post, it will present users with a more elegant and improved user interface, with a slimmer look, rounded corners, organized containers and visual elements semi-transparent. To respond to two precise user needs, access to chat history and the ability to share and export the results of a chat started in Bing will be enabled in the Edge sidebar, so that you have it at hand if you continue to browse online. Starting immediately, Microsoft confirms that the chat will also include the functionality of sharing the conversation with other users on social media and exporting the content using collaboration tools such as Word. Finally, with the “actions” of Edge, the Redmond giant wants to help more and more people rely on artificial intelligence to complete a greater number of activities with fewer steps: if you want to watch a particular film, for example , these new browser features will show the chat options in the sidebar and then play the desired movie from where it is available.
From product to platform
Finding information faster, creating images more easily directly within the chat and making the chat an excellent tool for understanding and acting: the essence that led to the development of Bing AI (and Edge AI) can probably be summarized in these characteristics . The next step, as Mehdi points out in the closing of his post, will be to insert third-party plug-ins (such as OpenTable or Wolfram|Alpha) into the search engine chat experience, further opening Open AI technology to developers in a platform logic (further announcements in this sense will arrive on the occasion of the Microsoft Build scheduled for the end of the month). And if artificial intelligence is confirmed at the center of the evolution of Bing and Edge, the principle that will mark this path responds to an approach that wants to be “responsible”, through the blocking of harmful content and data protection.
