Microsoft is staking its future on AI through billions of dollars of investment as it directly challenges Alphabet's Google.
REDMOND, USA – Microsoft is revamping its Bing search engine and Edge Web browser with artificial intelligence,on Tuesday, February 7, signaling its ambition to retake the lead in consumer technology markets where it has fallen behind.
Working with the startup OpenAI, Microsoft is aiming to leapfrog its rival and potentially claim vast returns from tools that speed up all manner of content creation, automating tasks, if not jobs themselves. That would affect products for business, such as cloud computing and collaboration tools, as well as consumer internet.
Many investors see the new technology as a win for all players. Shares of Microsoft closed 4.2% higher on Tuesday and Alphabet gained 4.6%. Bing will be powered by AI and run on a new “large language model” that is more powerful than ChatGPT, said Microsoft Consumer Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Mehdi. A chatbot will help users refine queries more easily, give more relevant, up-to-date results, and even make shopping easier.Microsoft is now aiming to market OpenAI’s technology, including ChatGPT, to its cloud customers and add the same power to its suite of products, including search.
Microsoft’s decision to update its Edge browser will intensify competition with Google’s Chrome browser. At the event, Mehdi demonstrated how the AI-enhanced search engine will make shopping and creating emails easier. He showed how Bing could estimate, for example, whether a certain type of couch could fit in the back of a car by pulling together Web data on one’s vehicle dimensions.