Microsoft planning to bring ChatGPT capabilities to Bing to challenge Google Search

Microsoft is reportedly planning to update its Bing search engine to rival Google more efficiently. According to Reuters, the company is closely working with AI (artificial intelligence) research firm, OpenAI, to incorporate its ChatGPT tech into Bing to let users find answers to complex queries in plain, jargon-free English. ChatGPT, which was released late last year for public testing, has created quite a buzz among fans and enthusiasts for offering a human-like reply to almost all queries. The AI-powered chatbot can even solve math problems and review computer code.

The new report highlights that Microsoft might launch the updated Bing before the end of March to challenge Alphabet-owned search engine Google. The exact functioning remains unclear at the moment.

OpenAI is also backed by Microsoft, and the latter offered $1 billion in funding to the AI research firm in 2019. Both companies had formed a multi-year partnership to develop artificial intelligence supercomputing technologies on Microsoft's Azure cloud computing service. Notably, Microsoft incorporated tech from OpenAI's Dall-E into Bing to let users create images based on simple text inputs last year. For instance, Dall-E is capable of creating a caricature of a 'cat on the moon wearing a red hat' without plagiarism. Similar to ChatGPT, OpenAI's Dall-E is also backed by AI.

Amid all this, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who is currently visiting India, tested ChatGPT's capabilities at the Microsoft Future Ready Leadership Summit in Mumbai on Tuesday. As reported by Moneycontrol, Nadella did a live demonstration of ChatGPT, and his first query was on "the future of Mumbai." He even went on to ask ChatGPT to rank Mumbai's street food.

Once the incorporation between Microsoft Bing and ChatGPT is over, the former will be able to answer users' questions in seconds in plain English. Before that, OpenAI will need to fix ChatGPT's current limitations. For instance, ChatGPT's knowledge is limited to world events before 2021. It also offers inaccurate answers on frequent occasions.

Microsoft Bing can offer answers based on information available on Wikipedia and other public encyclopedias. Google, on the other hand, does a far better job of answering users' queries based on recent new articles. However, the Alphabet-owned search engine can also mislead users and the answers, at times, aren't straightforward. A report last month pointed out that Google's management declared ChatGPT "code red", and has asked its researchers to create a similar AI-based platform. The management is also pushing for updates for Google to make it smarter and more intuitive.