Six months ago, Microsoft announced its AI-powered Bing search engine and Edge browser, and the tech giant certainly does not intend to stop there. Microsoft has the ambition to implement AI in all of its products and services, and not only that but also to go beyond its own products.
Microsoft shared that Bing Chat will soon be available in Chrome and Safari on both web and mobile. Bing Chat is also available as a standalone Android and iOS app, which will also receive some new features. The company’s goal is to allow more people to access Bing’s capabilities, such as summarized answers and image creation.
While Microsoft may open Bing Chat for usage in third-party browsers, it still recommends using the Microsoft Edge browser if you want to experience the AI chatbot capabilities at their best. Chrome and Safari will have limitations, such as offering only 2,000 words per prompt on Chrome and Safari, compared to 4,000 on Edge. Features such as longer conversations and chat history will be available only on Edge.
Along with announcing the availability of Bing Chat for Chrome and Safari, Microsoft also shared that the AI-powered Bing mobile app will now have a dark mode option. The company also reminded users of the newest Bing Chat features that were recently added, such as Visual Search.
Visual Search is a feature powered by AI that allows you to enter a visual prompt. For example, you can take a picture of the inside of your fridge with all the products you have at the moment and ask Bing Chat to give you some ideas on what to cook. In other words, Bing Chat can understand the context of an image, interpret it, and answer questions about it.
These new features and updates to Bing Chat availability were announced in a blog post celebrating 6 months of the new AI-powered Bing. Microsoft shares that during this time, more than 1 billion chats were initiated, and people generated over 750 million images.
AI is undoubtedly developing rapidly, entering more and more products daily. One of the most popular AI chatbots, OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4, actually powers Bing Chat, but the latter offers even more accurate and up-to-date information since it has access to Bing Search. With Microsoft working hard to improve its AI products, its biggest competitor, Google is also stepping up its game with its Google Bard and updating its Assistant using AI.