It will soon be possible to "
chat
" online with Bing, Microsoft's search engine, which hopes to fundamentally transform the user experience through artificial intelligence (AI) and regain ground on Google.
Satya Nadella, the boss of Microsoft, spoke of a “
new era
” for internet research, before announcing the integration into Bing of new AI technologies developed by the computer giant and by the startup OpenAI.
"
The race starts today
", he launched, referring to Google, which largely dominates this market and which on Monday unveiled "Bard", a competitor to ChatGPT, OpenAI's star software capable of generating all kinds of texts according to user requests.
Read alsoMicrosoft and Google whistle the start of the great battle of artificial intelligence
Answers to complex queries
The new Bing, available only in test version for the moment, is supposed to give more relevant and more complete results, with direct answers to questions from Internet users, in addition to links that refer to other pages on the web.
Above all, it includes a chatbot (conversational robot), capable of planning a three-day trip to Venice according to a given budget or of writing an email according to the instructions of the user.
He is a "
co
-pilot " but the Internet user remains at the controls, underlined Yusuf Mehdi, a vice-president of the Redmond group (northwest of the United States), during a press conference whose theme had been kept secret until the last minute.
An example of a Bing-generated response to the question “vegetarian menu ideas for 6 people” Microsoft
This new product from Microsoft has been expected since last year, when the success of ChatGPT imposed so-called “
generative
” AI as a fundamental trend.
The inventor of Windows invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019 and just struck a new multi-billion deal with the Californian startup founded in 2015.
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This company was previously known only in restricted circles, for two automated creation software, Dall-E for the generation of images and GPT-3 for the generation of texts (used in ChatGPT).
Boost competition with Google
Advances in OpenAI have put Microsoft back in the race for online innovation.
Last December, Google held about 84% of the online search market, compared to Bing's 9%, according to Statista.
In one year, Microsoft's engine has eroded 2% from the industry giant.
“
There needs to be innovation in online research because this technology is so important to humanity.
And so you need competition
,” Jordi Ribas, vice-president of Microsoft, who has worked on Bing for 15 years, told AFP.
"
That's why I never got discouraged
."
His team worked tirelessly to find the right balance, knowing that ChatGPT is also notorious for its sometimes completely wrong answers, given with great aplomb.
“
It's an amazing toy, but it's still a bit of a toy.
The question was how to turn it into a tool that does not hallucinate (…) and that helps to accomplish tasks in minutes that used to take hours
,” he explained.
