Microsoft made headlines yesterday by incorporating AI capabilities into its Bing search and Edge browser that are driven by OpenAI and ChatGPT (particularly, the new “Prometheus Model,” a version of ChatGPT with up-to-date information).
There was a lot of discussion about the AI features being accessible right away alongside the announcements. However, if, like me, you headed straight to Bing.com in quest of the brand-new AI toy, you could have been let down by its absence. “Available now” is a stretch at best because the Edge features need a browser preview and the Bing features have a waiting period. So, here’s what to do if you want to be as prepared as you can be for Microsoft’s new AI capabilities.
If you aren’t already, the first and most crucial step is to join the Bing waitlist. Go to bing.com/new and select “Join the waitlist” to accomplish that.
You will be prompted to log into Bing with your Microsoft account when you click the “Join the waitlist” button. The identical page should then appear, but with a button that says, “Access the new Bing faster.” You can install the Microsoft Bing App for your smartphone and “Set Microsoft defaults on your PC” by clicking that, which will direct you to a page with a QR code to scan.
Setting Bing as your search engine is essentially the same as setting Microsoft defaults. When I clicked it in Firefox, I was required to install the Bing Search Engine and apply the Bing Wallpaper extension, which appears to vary depending on the browser. However, I was required to download a file called “WebBrowsingOptimizer” when accessing the page through the Edge browser. Although the webpage stated it would change my default web browser to Edge and search engine to Bing, among other things, I chose not to download the file.
Installing the Bing app from the appropriate app store and logging into your Microsoft account are the only two steps required to get it on your phone.
Although it’s unclear how long you’ll have to wait, Microsoft promises to alert users as soon as they are removed from the queue and given access to the new Bing. You can experiment with the new Bing in the interim by clicking the blue cards underneath the title “Ask anything.”
You must install the ‘Developer’ (or Dev) channel, an early preview channel that is updated weekly, in order to use the latest features in Edge. Microsoft has four Edge channels: daily “Canary,” weekly “Dev,” monthly “Beta,” and finally “Stable.” Typically, new features progress through the channels until they are prepared for general use.
Downloading the Dev channel from this link will give you access to a new Edge design (similar to one that has already leaked) as well as some of the recently detailed AI features. If you already use it, check that you are running version 111.0.1660.6 or a later version by going to Settings > About Microsoft Edge.
Look for the Bing logo in a speech bubble in the top-right corner of the browser once you’ve installed Edge Dev and navigated through the first start-up windows. The new AI copilot and Bing features are located in the Discover sidebar, which you can access by clicking or hovering over that bubble. Obviously, as they become accessible.
For the time being, a card should display your queue status. After being removed from the waitlist, you ought to have immediate access to the ChatGPT-like capabilities in the Edge sidebar.
The new Bing works similarly to ChatGPT in that it can generate content by sending emails or making itineraries and includes links that can be useful. In order for consumers to understand exactly what Bing is referring to, Bing will acknowledge its sources.
Final Words
Microsoft is adding two new AI features to the Edge browser in addition to Bing: write and chat. Users can use a chatbot for assistance with summarising long messages and other ChatGPT-like features in the Edge Sidebar. In a similar vein, it can assist in content creation.
In addition to utilizing a new AI model from OpenAI, Microsoft claims to have created a proprietary method of interacting with the OpenAI model dubbed the Prometheus model. This method is intended to provide results that are more pertinent, timely, and targeted while also improving safety.
The AI model is also being used by Microsoft’s primary Bing search ranking algorithm, which, according to Microsoft, has produced the highest increase in relevance in the past 20 years. Even simple searches will become more relevant and accurate as a result.
According to Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president and consumer chief marketing officer at Microsoft, “These ground-breaking new search experiences are possible because Microsoft has committed to building Azure into an AI supercomputer for the world, and OpenAI has used this infrastructure to train the breakthrough models that are now being optimized for Bing.”
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