Microsoft brings AI-driven Bing ChatGPT chat preview to iOS

Microsoft has announced preview releases of its new Bing and Edge apps for iPhone and Android which include voice search and access to its AI ChatGPT integration. It means an iPhone user can tap the Bing app to begin a chat session and get useful information – though you do need to sign up to the Bing previewfirst.

Bing there

Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella is all in on the potential of AI to boost search. He called it the biggest thing to happen to his company. “I have not seen something like this since I would say 2007-2008, when the cloud was just first coming out,” he said. Announcing the new iOS betas, Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate Vice President and Consumer Chief Marketing Officer said: “We’re beginning to roll out the incredible capabilities of the new Bing and Edge on your smartphone along with some exciting new features, such as voice input. In addition, we are creating a new chat experience, beginning with Skype, to enhance your social communications with your friends and family.”

What does this mean?

The idea is that you can use these apps to interrogate Microsoft’s chatbot/AI to get more complex responses to questions. In Bing, you might request ideas for travel, for example. In Skype a group of users can ask for answers which the whole group can see. Microsoft also talks about using these tools to help put together an itinerary for short city breaks.

What’s important here is that by bringing this more intelligent search to mobile devices Microsoft is also hitting its audience where they are. It tells us 64% of search activity today takes place on mobile devices.

[Also read: 18 things we learned about Apple, Siri and AI today]

This is how it works:

• Open the app.
• Start the chat session by tapping the Bing icon at the bottom.
• Ask complex or simple questions.
• You can ask using text and voice.
• Answers will be displayed as bullet points, as simplified responses, or in text format.
• In Skype, you can type @Bing and ask a question which is shared with everyone in the chat.

All this AI deployment is exciting, I guess, though some unanswered challenges remain. For example, what is the environmental cost of each search in comparison to classic text-based enquiries, and to what extent can AI learn without going completely nuts? And can this kind of intelligence yet truly replace a search engine? (A: I don’t think it can at this point, but it will).

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