In November 2022, a new technology, Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT), burst on to the scene.
For the first time, generative artificial intelligence (AI) was available for anyone to use – and use it they did: ChatGPT had more than 100-million users within the first two months of its launch and has more than 13-million daily visitors. In January 2023, ChatGPT crossed 100-million users, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in a short period of time.
ChatGPT is a chatbot developed by OpenAI, built on top of the company’s GPT-3 family of large language models, and has been fine-tuned using both supervised and reinforcement learning techniques.
It was launched as a prototype on November 30, 2022, and quickly garnered attention for its detailed responses and articulate answers across many domains of knowledge.
Microsoft quickly signed a deal to invest up to $10-billion into OpenAI, pushing the company’s valuation was estimated at $29-billion in 2023, and has started to incorporate the technology into its search products.
In February, Microsoft launched an AI-powered Bing search engine and Edge browser, which it believes will deliver better search, more complete answers, a new chat experience and the ability to generate content.
Satya Nadella.
“AI will fundamentally change every software category, starting with the largest category of all – search,” says Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO of Microsoft. “We’re launching Bing and Edge powered by AI copilot and chat, to help people get more from search and the web.”
Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice-president and consumer chief marketing officer, wrotes: “There are 10-billion search queries a day, but we estimate half of them go unanswered. That’s because people are using search to do things it wasn’t originally designed to do. It’s great for finding a website, but for more complex questions or tasks too often it falls short.
“We have brought together search, browsing and chat into one unified experience you can invoke from anywhere on the web.”
He says the new offerings deliver the following:
* Better search. The new Bing gives you an improved version of the familiar search experience, providing more relevant results for simple things like sports scores, stock prices and weather, along with a new sidebar that shows more comprehensive answers if users want them.
* Complete answers. Bing reviews results from across the web to find and summarise the answer users are looking for, Mehdi says. “For example, you can get detailed instructions for how to substitute eggs for another ingredient in a cake you are baking right in that moment, without scrolling through multiple results.”
* A new chat experience. “For more complex searches – such as for planning a detailed trip itinerary or researching what TV to buy – the new Bing offers new, interactive chat,” Mehdi explains. “The chat experience empowers you to refine your search until you get the complete answer you are looking for by asking for more details, clarity and ideas – with links available so you can immediately act on your decisions.”
* A creative spark. “There are times when you need more than an answer – you need inspiration. The new Bing can generate the content to help you. It can help you write an email, create a five-day itinerary for a dream vacation to Hawaii, with links to book your travel and accommodations, prep for a job interview or create a quiz for trivia night. The new Bing also cites all its sources, so you’re able to see links to the web content it references.”
* New Microsoft Edge experience. “We’ve updated the Edge browser with new AI capabilities and a new look, and we’ve added two new functionalities: Chat and compose,” says Mehdi. “With the Edge Sidebar, you can ask for a summary of a lengthy financial report to get the key takeaways – and then use the chat function to ask for a comparison to a competing company’s financials and automatically put it in a table. You can also ask Edge to help you compose content, such as a LinkedIn post, by giving it a few prompts to get you started. After that, you can ask it to help you update the tone, format and length of the post. Edge can understand the web page you’re on and adapts accordingly.”
Mehdi says the new Bing experience has been enabled for four specific technology innovations:
* Next-generation OpenAI model. “Bing is running on a new, next-generation OpenAI large language model that is more powerful than ChatGPT and customised specifically for search. It takes key learnings and advancements from ChatGPT and GPT-3.5 – and it is even faster, more accurate and more capable.”
* Microsoft Prometheus model. “We have developed a proprietary way of working with the OpenAI model that allows us to best leverage its power. We call this collection of capabilities and techniques the Prometheus model. This combination gives you more relevant, timely and targeted results, with improved safety.”
* Applying AI to core search algorithm. “We’ve also applied the AI model to our core Bing search ranking engine, which led to the largest jump in relevance in two decades. With this AI model, even basic search queries are more accurate and more relevant.”
* New user experience. “We’re reimagining how you interact with search, browser and chat by pulling them into a unified experience. This will unlock a completely new way to interact with the web.”
Mehdi stresses that, together with OpenAI, Microsoft has been intentional in implementing safeguards to defend against harmful content. “Our teams are working to address issues such as misinformation and disinformation, content blocking, data safety and preventing the promotion of harmful or discriminatory content in line with our AI principles.”
The new Bing is available today in a limited preview on desktop.
Google hits back
Search leader Google didn’t take long to hit back: the next day it showcased how it is already using generative AI, along with new offerings and its vision for the future.
Prabhakar Radhavan.
“Although we are 25 years into search, I dare say we have just begun,” says Prabhakar Raghavan, senior vice-president at Google. “We are reinventing what it means to search, and the best is yet to come.”
Raghavan points out that the key to understanding information that empowers people is language. And, until recently, language was accessible only by the people who understood it.
Today, more than 1-billion people use Google Translate to understand conversations in 133 languages, and the company recently added 33 new languages to Translate’s offline mode.
“And soon we will offer a richer and more intuitive way to translate language which will consider the context needed for the right turn of phrase,” Raghavan says.
Google’s Zero-Shot Machine Translation tool, which can translate from multiple languages, has now added 24 new languages to further bridge the language divide.
“But, although language is at the heart of how we communicate, we also communicate visually,” Raghavan says. “Back in 2017, we redefined search with Lens and have since brought it directly on to the search bar. We recently reached a major milestone of more than 1-billion people using Lens in a month – so we can say the age of visual search is here.”
New developments in Lens allow users to translate text overlaid on pictures, seamlessly replacing the original text – and to translate text in pictures within their context. In the coming months, Lens will allow users to visually search across multiple apps on their mobile phones.
“With multisearch you can search with text and pictures together,” explains Liz Reid, vice-president: search at Google. “This ability lets you mix modalities and opens up a whole world of possibilities.”
The ability to use multisearch to locate places near the user will be rolled out across the globe in the coming months.
Google has had a two-year start on adding generative AI into its services, with next-generation language and conversation capabilities powered by its Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA).
Its conversational AI service, Bard, is now being opened up to an ecosystem of trusted developers before becoming more widely available to the public in the coming weeks. “We will continue to ensure it meets our high bar of quality and trust,” Raghavan says.
While Google has a long history of offering up the answers to factual queries, Raghavan points out that there are many queries for which there is no right answer, or Nora queries, where users may want to explore a diverse range of opinions. “So we are bringing generative AI directly to your search results, which will help to organise complex responses and opinions, from where the user can quickly explore new angles,” he says.
But the potential for generative AI goes beyond language and text, Raghavan adds. Not only can content creators automate 360-degree animations from just a handful of images, users will be able to search using text, voice, images or a combination of these models.
“As we continue to bring generative AI technologies to our products, the only limit to search will be your imagination,” he says.
Google is opening up its Generative API (application programming interface) to developers and partners and, over time, will create a suite of tools to allow others to create applications using AI.
“When it comes to AI, it is critical that we bring these experienes to the world responsibly,” Raghavan stresses. “We have been focusing on responsible AI since the beginning and working with partners and the development community to ensure that we bring AI to people in a way that is bold and responsible.”
An example of a more immersive experience is the new developments in Google Maps.
“We are evolving the two-dimensional map into a multi-dimension view of the real world,” says Chris Phillips, vice-president and GM: geo at Google. “This immersive view is a more natural way to explore and is truly intuitive.
“It allows the user to truly experience a place before they step inside – and offers a completely new way to interact with the map.”
Search with LiveView has been introduced in some cities and will be rolled out to additional locations over the coming months.