The News: Today Microsoft announced that the new AI-powered Bing is in open preview. This “copilot for the web” has been in testing for the last three months, with over a half a billion search queries. The search function is powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 and is ushering in a new wave of the internet. Read the article from Microsoft.
AI-powered Bing Now in Open Preview as Platform Continues to Grow and Evolve
Analyst Take: Microsoft’s Bing search engine has been on a rapid ascent in recent months, with the company announcing a number of new features and partnerships that are helping to drive growth. And today the waitlist to use the exciting features has been eliminated. Bing is now in open preview.
While long lagging Google, Bing interest and demand has grown rapidly since the inception of its OpenAI partnership. Bing has seen strong growth in its daily active user base, which now exceeds 100 million. The company is attributing this growth to several factors, including the launch and integration of Bing Image Creator, the continued expansion of its search results, and the growing popularity of its mobile app. But undoubtedly the AI capabilities have been core to its recent significant growth.
In addition to these internal developments, Bing is also benefiting from the growth of Microsoft Edge. The new browser has been well received by its users, and it is helping to drive traffic to Bing.
As a result of all these factors, Bing is now the third most popular search engine in the world. The company is confident that it can continue to grow and evolve in the years to come. We believe that Google’s ability to respond to Microsoft’s innovation will be the determining factor as to how fast Bing takes market—if it ultimately does.
With its most recent launch. Here are some of the specific things that Bing is doing to continue its growth:
- Making Bing more visual. Bing is moving away from text-only search and chat to one that is incredibly more visual with rich image/video answers and coming shortly, new multimodal support. This is designed to make it easier for users to find the information they need, regardless of their preferred format.
- Making Bing more productive. Bing is moving from single use chat/search sessions to multi-session productivity experiences with chat history and persistent chats within Edge. This will help users keep track of their conversations and get things done.
- Opening Bing to developers and third parties. Bing is opening its platform capabilities so developers and third parties can build on top of Bing to help people take actions on their queries and complete tasks. This should enable new and innovative ways for people to use Bing.
As we see it, Bing is an increasingly powerful search engine that is rapidly evolving. The recent integration with OpenAI is propelling both interest and quality in its results, bringing Bing and Microsoft back to the forefront in the AI race. With its focus on visual search, productivity, and developer support, Bing we believe that Bing is well-positioned to continue its growth in the years to come and the growing competition with Google should drive the innovation required to make search better for everyone.
*This article was written with the support of GPT/AI tools based upon the analyst’s recorded viewpoint on the topic.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
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Author Information
Daniel is the CEO of The Futurum Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise.
From the leading edge of AI to global technology policy, Daniel makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology investments. Daniel is a top 5 globally ranked industry analyst and his ideas are regularly cited or shared in television appearances by CNBC, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal and hundreds of other sites around the world.
A 7x Best-Selling Author including his most recent book “Human/Machine.” Daniel is also a Forbes and MarketWatch (Dow Jones) contributor.
An MBA and Former Graduate Adjunct Faculty, Daniel is an Austin Texas transplant after 40 years in Chicago. His speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.
