New Bing search engine powered by GPT-4 model, confirms Microsoft

An announcement of the next-generation GPT-4 AI language model has been recently made by OpenAI. However, it was revealed that Microsoft’s AI-powered Bing had already been using it.

“We are happy to confirm that the new Bing is running on GPT-4, customized for search,” according to a blog post from Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s head of consumer marketing. “If you’ve used the new Bing in preview at any time in the last six weeks, you’ve already had an early look at the power of OpenAI’s latest model.”

They were not just rumors

When Microsoft launched the new Bing, many rumors about it being powered by CPT-4 were floating around. Therefore, the confirmation did not come as a surprise. However, it was pretty interesting to witness that Microsoft had enough confidence in the model to staking the company’s reputation on it. 

The AI-powered Bing Chatbot resolves your search queries with summarized answers in a more conversational way than a list of blue links. Previously, Microsoft claimed that a model called “Prometheus” powers the new Bing, but it wasn’t clear until now if it had the involvement of GPT-4. 

The new Bing will benefit from the future improvements of the Open AI to “GPT-4 and beyond,” Mehdi says. The company is also getting lenient on the restrictions it implemented on the Bing AI Chatbot to keep a check on its strange behaviors. 15 turns per session would now be allowed to the users with a daily limit of 150 turns, as per Bing CVP Jordi Ribas. 

Apart from the ability to process and respond to languages, Images as input are also accepted by the GPT-4. This feature is not publicly available yet and is still in preview. However, individuals witnessed the part in the OpenAI developer live stream. 

Cut-off from the rest of the internet

Google's Bard AI and Microsoft envision Bing doing the same thing. They strive to serve as a pseudo gatekeeper to the rest of the information on the internet. Instead of directing users to other websites, the companies aim to build generative AI systems (Bing and Bard) that will automatically summarize and display the information without the requirement of leaving the branded search page. 

March 14 has been a crucial day for AI news. Apart from the Bing confirmation and the official announcement of GPT-4, Google announced various AI features coming to Docs, Gmail, and more and opened up access to PaLM, its own AI language model.