I Tried Microsoft’s New AI-Powered Bing. Search Will Never Be the Same.

At least that’s my take after spending some time testing it out. 

Leaning on its multiyear, multibillion-dollar partnership with the buzzy startup OpenAI, Microsoft is incorporating a ChatGPT-like bot front and center on the Bing home page. You can ask it questions—even about recent news events—and it will respond in sentences that seem like they were written by a human. It even uses emojis.

Microsoft is also adding AI features to my favorite browser Edge. (Seriously.) The tools can summarize webpages and assist with writing emails and social-media posts. 

“We are grounded in the fact that Google dominates this [search] space,” Microsoft Chief Executive

Satya Nadella

told me in an interview. “A new race is starting with a completely new platform technology. I’m excited for users to have a choice finally.” 

Google—which holds 93% of the global search engine market share, according to analytics company StatCounter—is on Microsoft’s heels. On Monday, the search company said it is working on Bard, a similar chat tool that generates responses from web-based information.

Microsoft’s new Bing and Edge became available in a limited preview Tuesday. You have to sign up on bing.com for the preview wait list, and once you are in, you’ll have to use the Edge browser (available for Windows and MacOS). Microsoft plans to bring it to other web browsers over time.

It’s far too early to call a winner in this AI search race. But after seeing the new Bing in action, I can confidently say this: A big change is coming to how we get information and how we interact with our computers.

Bing With Chat

Bye-bye, long skinny search bar. Hello, big search box that invites you to “Ask Me Anything.”

I asked: “Can you recap the biggest winners of the 2023 Grammys?” The results page gave me the usual answers on the left. But the bigger trick? On the right, Bing’s chatbot typed out the answer, with a bulleted list of winners and a mention of Beyoncé’s most-Grammys-ever record. The answer also contained clickable citations, noting the source of the listed information.

I followed up: “Do you know if Beyoncé is touring?” Bing’s chatbot told me plainly that the North American leg of the Renaissance Tour starts in July. The information appears to be accurate—at least, according to Google.

I asked Bing if it would buy me a ticket. It apologized and said it didn’t have money. “I’m just a chat mode of Bing search,” it said, “not an assistant.”

Impressive, yes, but also slower than a typical search. It took the AI about a minute to type out the Grammy winners. There is a “Stop Responding” button if you don’t want to wait for the bot to finish. You can adjust your query for brevity, asking it to “limit your answer to 100 words.”

The new Bing is based on an improved OpenAI model that’s more accurate and relevant than what’s currently in its ChatGPT software. More important, it now has Bing’s vast knowledge of the world and internet. 

Still, it won’t get everything right,

Yusuf Mehdi,

Microsoft’s corporate vice president for consumer marketing, told me. The system is programmed to set expectations with phrases like “This is not a definitive answer.”

I tried lots of other queries. To prep for my interview, I asked: “In the voice of Joanna Stern, generate a list of questions to ask Satya Nadella about AI.” While the system didn’t quite nail my voice, it generated some decent questions. I asked it to answer these questions in the voice of Satya Nadella. You’ll have to watch the video to see who answered best, Human Satya or AI Satya.

“With pretty much all computer interaction going forward, you’ll start with a draft,” Mr. Nadella said. “That doesn’t mean you don’t get to inspect the draft, approve the draft and redefine or edit the draft.”

It’s true. I have actually started to use ChatGPT to help jump-start ideas for interview questions, emails, columns and video scripts.

Edge With AI 

As a devout Microsoft Edge browser user, I am excited about the new Bing button in the upper-right corner. It launches a panel of AI tools for the web.

If I were reading this very column online, I could tell the bot to “summarize this article for me in five bullet points.” Yes, rendering my beautiful words wasted. In one recorded demo I saw, the tool boiled down a five-page earnings report to a few bullets.

In the panel’s Compose tab, you can tell it to write whatever you wish—an email to your boss, a Facebook post, an answer on a job application. You can select the tone (enthusiastic, professional, funny, etc.), length (short, medium, long) and format (paragraph, email, blog post, bulleted list).

The system has guardrails in place to prevent hate speech and other harmful content, Mr. Nadella said, adding that Microsoft has prioritized AI responsibility and safety.

Similar AI tools are headed for Microsoft Office, Mr. Nadella said, but he wouldn’t say when. 

What this means is that OpenAI’s little project, which only launched publicly around Thanksgiving, will soon appear in some of the world’s most popular software programs. Students will be able to generate drafts of essays and professionals will be able to save hours writing memos and brainstorming presentations, all using a few simple prompts. (Software programmers can already use AI to generate code using Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot.)

Mr. Nadella said he thinks this is a positive step forward, not a sign that machines will soon put us all out of business. “This is going to help us do our jobs better, reduce some of the drudgery,” he said. “I think we need a productivity boost.”

At the very least, we’ll get back some of the time we spent on old Bing…trying to find what we were looking for.

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Write to Joanna Stern at [email protected]