Microsoft recently launched the new Big search engine, promising a different search experience with the help of AI. At this point, the highlight of the search tool's AI features are the "AI-generated stories," which are the small multimedia presentation giving a brief overview of the searched topic.
Users Can Now View Short Presentation Slides Made by AI to Explain the Searched Topic
In a blog post from Microsoft, the company highlights the AI-powered features of the new Bing search engine. Searching a topic using Bing will create a short presentation slide including images and audio bites that are AI-generated. Microsoft said that this feature is a way for users to easily "consume bite-sized information" as they search for answers on the Internet.
As reported by The Verge, the AI-generated stories from Bing are similar to the ones that people are already familiar with on popular social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat. There is a progress bar showing how far off the user is in the presentation before the next one pops up.
The only difference is that the slide is created by AI to give a brief explanation about a particular query. It will also show photos and videos related to the topic being searched. Users can opt to enable the voice-over, which will read the texts instead of displaying them, along with background music.
However, The Verge also noted that not all search results will yield AI-generated slides. For an instance, searching topics such as "cubism," "impressionism" and "tai chi" would generate multimedia stories, but looking answers for "iPhone," "Apple" or "best restaurants Spokane" would not have these stories appearing.
It is not known which specific topics would create AI-powered stories, although some people might prefer not having to view these slides when they are searching for basic questions on Bing. For now, the AI-generated stories are available in searches written in English, French, Japanese, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Polish and Arabic.
Related Article: Microsoft Introduces Bing's AI ChatBot to Mobile Devices And Skype, Adds Voice Support
Bing's AI-Powered Search Tool Well-Received by Users
Most people who have already tried using the new Bing search engine appears to be satisfied with its AI capabilities. According to Search Engine Land, Microsoft reported that 71% of the search results were given a "thumbs up" reaction. Moreover, the company has claimed that Bing is enjoying "increased engagement across traditional search results and with the new features like summarized answers, the new chat experience, and the content creation tools."
Microsoft also admitted that while the Bing search engine has been receiving positive reviews as of late, they have also seen some areas for improvement. The company said that testing the search tool is something that "can't be done solely in the lab," but needs to be done in the real world." For one, Bing's AI features do not work when answering questions about real-time events. Hence, Microsoft is looking for a solution to feed "very timely data like live sports scores" into the AI system.
Microsoft also noted that there were some technical issues and bugs detected, but were already fixed. These issues include slow loading, broken links and glitched formatting.
Read Also: Microsoft's Bing Will Use a More Powerful Language Model than OpenAI's ChatGPT