Celebrated unhinged search tool pushed in latest OS update
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.
