Microsoft Puts ChatGPT's Technology Into Its Bing Search Engine

At an event at its headquarters, Microsoft showed a version of Bing that answers questions in sentences and holds a conversation, using a newer version of OpenAI's program. It's the first serious challenge to Google search in years.

Microsoft showed a new Bing today at its headquarters outside Seattle. You can still type a search and get a list of links, but next to it now is a written answer — a few paragraphs, with footnotes pointing to the pages it drew from — and a chat window where you can ask follow-up questions. It runs on what Microsoft called a "next-generation" version of the OpenAI program behind ChatGPT, adapted to look things up on the live web rather than relying on memory.

The same technology is going into Microsoft's Edge web browser, which will be able to summarize the page you're reading or draft an email from it. Both are available today to a waiting list, and Microsoft said it wants millions of people on it within weeks.

The demonstration was built to make a point about Google. Satya Nadella, Microsoft's chief executive, said "the race starts today" and that the company would move fast. Bing has held a small fraction of the search market for as long as it has existed; Google holds about nine-tenths. Nadella's argument is that a search engine that answers you changes the game enough to make that share up for grabs. Google announced its own chatbot yesterday, one day ahead of this event, which suggests it agrees.

The catch, which Microsoft acknowledged from the stage, is that the answers can be wrong. The footnotes are there so you can check. Whether people will is a different question.