Microsoft and the Bing team have announced a new AI-powered search experience that is more or less their version of Google's controversial AI overviews.
A blog post highlighting the new tool breaks down how Bing's version will be different with seemingly more upfront information (h/t Digital Trends).
Bing's generative search is meant to create "a bespoke and dynamic response." These include links to sources and further reading.
The example provided in the blog is the query "What is spaghetti western?" The AI-generated results begin with an in large, bold font that reads: A subgenre of films produced by Italian filmmakers.
Below this is an AI-summary highlighting different topics and including citations on where the information came from.
A source link is provided next to it, along with a number of summarized bites of information. On the left side of the screen there is an index for the different topics that the search produced. On the right are more traditional search results with links.
Microsoft claims that "early data indicates that this experience maintains the number of clicks to websites and supports a healthy web ecosystem."
The post also says that the Bing AI "understands the search query", meaning that conversational language or even non-specific queries are supposedly more likely to produce a result. Which is something that most large language models are capable of already but not specifically in a search engine.
The Bing team do say that the new search tool is being slowly rolled out. So, it's not clear who has access yet or when it will expand. They mentioned that they "will take our time, garner feedback, test and learn, and work to create a great experience before making this more broadly available."
Compared to Google's AI Overview, it isn't as minimalist and clean, but I think it looks and feels more informative with more actual options and links to information than the simple paragraph summary and a couple of links that Google is currently providing.
Between this and OpenAI's announcement of SearchGPT this week, Google is seeing some serious competition in the Search realm, especially when it comes to AI integration.
Google's AI overviews have been a disaster with a rushed implementation that has already been severely walked back.
Still, they are and remain the big dog the block with one study by HawkSEM claiming that Google had 1 billion daily active users in 2023 while Bing lagged far behind at 100 million daily users.
If other companies can start chipping away at Google with better search results perhaps it will make the giant take notice and actually improve its own search engine, which according to Ed Zitron is not doing well.
