The OpenAI founder has high hopes for working with Nadella, the head of Microsoft.
(Photo: IAN C. BATES/The New York Times//Redux/laif)
Seattle Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced on Tuesday that many of the company’s products would be extensively modified. In particular, the Bing Internet search is to be expanded to include an intelligent chatbot. The company is thus challenging the world’s largest search engine provider, Google. “Today the race begins,” Nadella said at a press conference at the company’s headquarters in Seattle.
The new functions are based on the start-up OpenAI. The company’s boss, Sam Altman, said: “This is the beginning of a new era.” Bing’s new features went far beyond the features of ChatGPT. The system can call up information in real time, is significantly faster and delivers more accurate results.
“We wanted to make our technologies available to as many people as possible,” Altman said. That’s why the company works so closely with Microsoft. Microsoft invested around one billion dollars in OpenAI in 2019 and recently announced another billion-dollar investment. Industry experts estimate that Microsoft is investing another ten billion dollars in OpenAI.
The revised Bing search will be able to react to complex entries in the future. At a demonstration, Microsoft showed how Bing creates a five-day trip to Mexico on command with detailed recommendations for places to visit and places to eat. Or, on command, a music quiz could be created with any number of questions and four possible answers.
In order to make these possibilities easily usable, Microsoft also presented a new version of its Internet browser Edge, which integrates these functions. For example, the update should offer the possibility of creating instant summaries of long documents.
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Nadella said, “Today marks the beginning of a new day for Internet searches.” The technological innovation is as far-reaching as the introduction of the first Internet browser. Behind the technology is the Microsoft-supported start-up OpenAI.
Microsoft will equip the new functions with a security architecture. This is intended to prevent the new functions of Bing from being used to hack computer systems or to plan a killing spree.
The Microsoft boss wants to equip all of the company’s products with artificial intelligence.
(Photo: Bloomberg)
So far, Google has been the dominant provider for Internet searches. Globally, Google currently claims around 85 percent in this area. With Bing, Microsoft comes to just under nine percent, according to figures from the service provider Statcounter.
This ratio could change thanks to the new AI functions, suspected analyst Dan Ives from wealth manager Wedbush. For him, the partnership with OpenAI could be a “game changer” for Microsoft. The Windows group is in a good position to take over a larger market share in the lucrative Internet search.
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