Microsoft Announces New AI-Powered Bing Search and Edge Web Browser

Yusuf Mehdi, consumer marketing chief at Microsoft:

The new Bing experience is a culmination of four technical breakthroughs:

  • Next-generation OpenAI model. We’re excited to announce the new Bing is running on a new, next-generation OpenAI large language model that is more powerful than ChatGPT and customized specifically for search. It takes key learnings and advancements from ChatGPT and GPT-3.5 — and it is even faster, more accurate and more capable.

  • Microsoft Prometheus model. We have developed a proprietary way of working with the OpenAI model that allows us to best leverage its power. We call this collection of capabilities and techniques the Prometheus model. This combination gives you more relevant, timely and targeted results, with improved safety.

  • Applying AI to core search algorithm. We’ve also applied the AI model to our core Bing search ranking engine, which led to the largest jump in relevance in two decades. With this AI model, even basic search queries are more accurate and more relevant.

  • New user experience. We’re reimagining how you interact with search, browser and chat by pulling them into a unified experience. This will unlock a completely new way to interact with the web.

The new Bing is available today in a limited preview on desktop, and everyone can visit Bing.com today to try sample queries and sign up for the waitlist. We’re going to scale the preview to millions in the coming weeks. A mobile experience will also be in preview soon.

Microsoft has been doggedly chasing Google Search for over 20 years. Tenacity is arguably the defining cultural principle at Microsoft. If they want to do something, they simply do not give up.

★ Tuesday, 7 February 2023