Microsoft is following through on a promise to integrate its controversial OpenAI-powered chatbot with the Bing search engine.
Redmond last month rolled out a preview of its Bing chatbot to hype and criticism. With the latest updates to Windows 11 this week, Microsoft is partially building it into the year-old operating system, making AI-powered Bing available from a shortcut in the Windows taskbar.
"Soon hundreds of millions of Windows 11 users can get access to this incredible new technology to search, chat, answer questions and generate content from right on their Windows taskbar," Panos Panay, Microsoft's chief product officer, writes in a blog post.
The software giant has placed an enormous bet on artificial intelligence, investing billions of dollars into startup OpenAI – the creators of GPT, ChatGPT, and other natural language AI tools – and aggressively pushing the technology into its products, from Teams to Edge and Skype.
In February, Microsoft said it also was bringing the Bing chatbot into the mobile arena, including iOS and Android apps.
In addition, the company is continuing to push AI into the cloud. The same day it announced the integration of the Bing chatbot with Windows 11, Microsoft said it is bringing more AI-powered features to Teams Premium and the Viva employee engagement service.
Teams Premium features OpenAI's GPT-3.5, the latest version of the language model. Teams Premium includes intelligent recap, a feature that uses AI to suggest action items and who's responsible for them to ensure they are followed up and creates recordings after the meeting that include automatically generated chapters and insights, from when a person's name was mentioned to when a screen was shared.
Other features coming in the next few months will include AI-generated notes to deliver key points from a meeting and tasks that will create and suggest action items, according to Colette Stallbaumer, general manager of Microsoft 365 and Future of Work.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella last month told CNBC that AI-infused search is the biggest innovation to come out of the company during his nine years at the helm and the most important since the late 2000s and the rise of cloud computing.
The company has pushed the importance of competing with rivals on the AI front, in particular Google. Google is working on Bard, its own AI-powered search technology, and others like Baidu and Tencent are making similar moves.
While ChatGPT – which is trained on the internet – quickly captured the public's imagination with the fast text responses to written questions, it also has been criticized for inaccuracies and plagiarism. During a Microsoft demo last month, when asked to list the best nightlife spots in Mexico City, it found restaurants and bars but gave incorrect details.
Bing also has trouble handling longer conversations. To manage that, Microsoft limits the number of consecutive questions a person can ask and how many conversations they can start each day. However, the company is apparently working out the kinks in those areas.
Bard hasn't fared much better. During a demo last month, the AI chatbot got an answer wrong, with Google parent company Alphabet's shares taking a hit for more than $100 billion in the stock market.
The Bing chatbot news was only part of a number of new features in Windows 11. Anorther is Phone Link for iOS, a tool being previewed by Windows Insiders that will let iPhone users directly link their device to Windows 11 PCs.
That means iPhone users will be able to make and receive calls as well as view iPhone notifications and send/receive texts from their PCs.
It's part of a larger effort by Microsoft to expand Windows 11 in the mobile space. In November 2022, Microsoft integrated iCloud Photos into Windows 11's Photos app, making it easier for iPhone users to view those photos on their PC.
Microsoft already offered Phone Link capabilities to Android users and now is making it easier for Samsung users to activate a personal hotspot via a single click within the Wi-Fi network list on a Windows PC. They can also more easily transfer their browser sessions from their smartphone to PC. ®
Source: The register