Microsoft recently announced a slew of new artificial intelligence-driven applications for its Bing chatbot and Edge web browser. Perhaps the most significant change is that Bing has access to the GPT-4 model, the same ‘engine’ that powers ChatGPT’s “Plus” subscription.
Previously, the GPT-4 version of the Bing chatbot was mainly available in limited quantities. Now it’s fully open in the Bing app and browser.
Multimodal answers
What’s also cool about the new update for the Bing chatbot is that it can now answer multimodally. That is, you can get an answer in text, images and video at the same time. For example, you can ask things about Bitcoin and at the same time get graphs or videos that go deeper into the answer.
Users also get access to their entire chat history. In addition, Edge users can move their chat to the sidebar, so they can continue to surf in the same tab.
Microsoft expects to deploy that application “soon”. In the future, according to Microsoft, Bing could even refer to previous sessions when it communicates with users. “Over time, we will personalize our chats more by bringing in chats from the past,” thus Microsoft.
Reserve restaurants
A cool application that seems to be coming soon for Bing is OpenTable. This is an application that allows users to book a table in a restaurant in the chat. It seems that the software then contacts the restaurant in question to make a reservation.
It is also working on Wolfram/Alpha, a modality that makes it possible to develop complex visualizations for mathematical and scientific problems. Microsoft says more integrations will be revealed as they are deployed.
The nice thing is that these new features do not cost any money. This is in contrast to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which costs $20 per month. For that $20 you then get access to the same AI model. In that respect, you are in the right place with Microsoft for the time being.