Internet
Microsoft brings Bing chatbot with AI to smartphones
Two weeks ago, Microsoft announced the first steps in its comprehensive AI offensive. photo
© Peter Kneffel/dpa
With artificial intelligence, Microsoft is currently trying to oust Google from the center of the Internet. And since most searches are done on mobile, the company is now targeting Android and iOS.
Microsoft is also bringing the AI chatbot from its completely revamped Bing search engine to the Android and iOS smartphone platforms. The company announced this in a blog post on Wednesday. The world’s largest software company also wants to equip its Edge browser for smartphones and its video telephony software Skype with artificial intelligence functions.
Microsoft announced the first steps of its comprehensive AI offensive in cooperation with the start-up OpenAI two weeks ago. Microsoft promises that Bing will aggregate reliable online sources to give users a single answer instead of a long list of links.
Similar to the text robot ChatGPT from OpenAI, the Bing chatbot impressed in the test phase with eloquent answers. However, he also sometimes provided incorrect or fictitious facts. In some cases, the Bing chatbot caused a stir with spontaneous declarations of love and snotty answers. After that, Microsoft restricted the use of the chat tool for lengthy dialogs, which had proven to be particularly error-prone.
Microsoft AI initiative
During the test phase, Microsoft did not completely open up access to the new Bing, instead putting many interested parties on a waiting list. In the meantime, however, more than a million people from 169 countries have been welcomed from the waiting list, wrote Microsoft manager Yusuf Mehdi. “We’re adding more people to the preview every day.” The feedback on the new functions is positive: “71 percent of the test participants gave the new Bing a “thumbs up” for the new search and answer functions.”
The Bing search queries on the smartphone do not have to be typed in, but can be dictated. At the same time, the new Bing mobile app can not only display the answers as written text, but also read them aloud. The new Bing and Edge mobile browsers could “serve as a co-pilot for the internet” even if you’re not on a desktop computer, Mehdi explained. The AI functions in Skype are intended to improve social communication with friends and family.
With the AI initiative, Microsoft is not only trying to become more relevant again in Internet searches, but also in web browsers. According to calculations by the market research company Statcounter, Google currently has a share of almost 93 percent in Internet searches, while Microsoft’s Bing is only 3 percent. The browsers look similarly bad: Google Chrome leads with 65.4 percent ahead of Safari (Apple) with 18.7 percent. Microsoft ends up with Edge at 4.5 percent market share.