software
Microsoft is expanding its offering with artificial intelligence
The Microsoft logo on the facade of an office building in Parkstadt Schwabing in the north of the Bavarian capital. photo
© Peter Kneffel/dpa
Microsoft continues to accelerate when it comes to artificial intelligence. A week before the developer conference of its arch-rival Google, the software company announces new AI functions for its offers.
Microsoft will equip its Bing search engine and the Edge browser with additional artificial intelligence (AI) functions. This was announced by Microsoft manager Yusuf Mehdi in a blog entry on Thursday. So far, Microsoft has offered a text-based AI offer, i.e. a text search and a chat robot. In the future, the AI system will also provide visual search results on the Microsoft search portal Bing or in the Microsoft browser Edge.
When searching for the right swing technique when skiing, users not only receive a text answer, but also a matching video. In the case of knowledge questions such as the color of the planet Neptune, the text not only explains why certain components of Neptune’s atmosphere absorb the red light and therefore make the planet appear blue. The phenomenon is also explained visually with photos or videos.
The technology used by Microsoft is primarily based on the GPT-4 language model, which was only presented to a broader public in mid-March by the start-up OpenAI. Microsoft is closely associated with the small company from San Francisco and has invested around 13 billion dollars in OpenAI according to industry estimates.
The end of the queues
Simultaneously with the introduction of new AI functions, Microsoft is now expanding the accessibility options. Previously, interested parties had to register on a waiting list in order to get access to “the new Bing”. In the future, all users will be able to try out the new AI offerings from Microsoft. However, the group continues to refer to the AI software as “Preview” (preview program) to signal that the system is still in an early stage of development and is not yet mature.
Mehdi referred to the German Press Agency on the high level of use since the premiere in early February. With the Bing Image Creator, more than 200 million images are now automatically created every day. “Overall, Bing has grown to over 100 million daily active users, and daily installs of the Bing mobile app have quadrupled since launch.” However, Mehdi admitted that the starting point was low.
According to Mehdi, the AI chat experience is to be expanded into a platform for developers. This would make it possible, for example, to search Bing chat for a popular restaurant for dinner and make a reservation in a system like OpenTable with just one click.