Hands On With Microsoft’s ChatGPT-Powered Bing: A New Kind of Search

Microsoft’s new AI-powered Bing might be the death of traditional search results. 

On Tuesday, the company debuted the new Bing, which taps into OpenAI’s ChatGPT to reinvent how online search is done. 

We had a chance to try the new Bing at Microsoft’s offices in Redmond, where we asked the program to answer a variety of questions. Our main takeaway: Bing takes the search experience further by synthesizing the numerous results from a normal search engine and reproducing them in an easy-to-understand format. 

The new Bing offering us an analysis on whether to buy Tesla stock.
(Credit: Michael Kan/Microsoft)

For example, if you wanted to create an itinerary for a trip to a foreign city or a meal plan to lose weight, you’d normally use a search engine to turn up relevant articles on the topic. Then you’d read the articles to come up with the itinerary or the meal plan. The new Bing, on the other hand, can read all the relevant articles for you and then churn out an easy-to-read, bulleted article(Opens in a new window) in seconds, all the while citing the sources. 

You can apply the same capability to a densely packed news article. The new Bing can break down the content into several main points; just ask for a summary. In addition, the answers can usually suggest follow-up prompts, like “how can I make a reservation for the restaurant?” or “how much does the laptop cost?” making it easy to extract even more information from Bing.  

The new Bing summarizing an article about the Chinese spy balloon.
(Credit: Michael Kan/Microsoft)

The answers the AI-powered Bing can generate essentially cut out the middleman: no need to scroll through search results to find one that satisfies you. The new Bing has been designed to be smart enough to analyze the information for you. This can include finding a good Indian restaurant in an area, the best laptop under $500, or whether you should invest in Tesla stock.

The new Bing will try to offer you suggestions in each case, all the while citing various sources at the bottom of the answer though a list of web links. As a result, you’re getting more transparency on how the AI program arrives at the answer, unlike OpenAI’s current implementation of ChatGPT, which doesn’t cite sources in its responses.

The new Bing offering us suggestions on the best laptop under $500.
(Credit: Michael Kan/Microsoft)

But the new AI-powered Bing can also go beyond search. Microsoft described the technology as a “co-pilot” for your everyday needs. This can apply to writing. The existing free-to-use ChatGPT has already shown it’s adept at producing essays, blog posts, and even writing computer code from a mere one-sentence prompt. Microsoft’s implementation can do the same.

On the Edge browser, the company has included a Bing icon that can open a side window. You then type in a prompt describing the blog post, email, or paragraph you’d like it to write, including the length, format, and tone. The program will churn out the desired content in seconds, which can then easily be copy and pasted. 

Bing writing an email for a Lord of The Rings, Hobbit-themed party.
(Credit: Michael Kan/Microsoft)

Of course, the big question is accuracy. Although the responses from Bing can cite sources at the bottom, you’re essentially trusting the program to give you reliable content when there isn’t a fact-checker or authorized source to look over each answer. 

Microsoft’s own FAQ(Opens in a new window) for the technology notes: “Bing aims to base all its responses on reliable sources—but AI can make mistakes, and third-party content on the internet may not always be accurate or reliable. Bing will sometimes misrepresent the information it finds, and you may see responses that sound convincing but are incomplete, inaccurate, or inappropriate.”

Hence, Bing’s approach to synthesizing the search results for a streamlined answer does carry misinformation risks. But for now, the Bing search engine isn’t entirely dropping the traditional search results, which show the source of the information upfront. Instead, the ChatGPT results will appear in their own column on the right next to the normal search results. Users can then click a “Chat” tab to enter chat-box mode with the AI-powered Bing.

How the ChatGPT-powered results can appear alongside the normal search engine.
(Credit: Michael Kan/Microsoft)