Microsoft has opened up the latest version of its Bing Chat AI chatbot to the general public, and announced major advancements in its intelligence.
All you need is a Microsoft account — that includes any old Hotmail addresses you may have — and the Microsoft Edge browser app. Then head to Bing Chat.
While Microsoft’s chatbot has been available through Bing Chat in the Edge internet browser for a while now, this latest release involved a new version being publically available worldwide. It has been in preview since February.
What can Microsoft’s Bing Chat do?
This new version of the chatbot can post images and videos right into the feed, moving on from a purely text-based interaction. You will soon also be able to generate images right from the chat feed, through an integration with Microsoft’s Bing Image Creator.
Microsoft also talks about “multimodal” support, meaning you’ll be able to upload an image and search for content in this, as you might do with Google Lens in an Android phone’s camera app.
This generation of Bing chatbot’s biggest changes are its plug-ins, although these are yet to be switched on.
Plug-ins are coming to Microsoft’s chatbot, letting it interact with other websites and services more directly. OpenTable will be the most useful of these for the average person, helping out when making a restaurant booking.
Microsoft stops short of suggesting you’ll flat-out be able to simply ask Bing Chat to book a table at Pizza Express, saying “it will leverage OpenTable to help you find and book a reservation.” But that is likely the end goal here.
Can chat bots be used for schoolwork?
Wolfram Alpha is the other plug-in Microsoft mentions. Itself a precursor to today’s chatbots, it can create graphs and visualisations to accompany answers Bing Chat may spit out.
For example, ask Wolfram Alpha about the rate of population growth and it will produce a world map showing how growth rates vary between countries; a 20-year graph of the change in global rates; and a chart of interesting stats on the subject. Worried about how AI will affect your kids’ schoolwork? Wolfram Alpha can make their assignments look more legit, at the very least.
“We believe these types of skills are a game-changer in the reinvention of search and to advance opportunities for developers in search,” Microsoft Corporate Vice President & Consumer Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Mehdi wrote on Microsoft’s blog.
How innovative are AI chatbots?
These might be compared to the Skills of the Amazon Alexa digital assistant. OpenTable’s Alexa Skill plug-in launched in 2017, and let folks book a table at a restaurant using an Echo speaker.
“We’re thrilled to provide diners with an Alexa skill to help them make reservations at thousands of restaurants across the UK using just their voice,” said OpenTable Vice President Adrian Valeriano way back in 2017.
Making bookings with an Echo speaker never really caught on. Will today’s supposedly world-changing chatbots have more luck?
