Bea Beltran Tech 02.06.2023 21:Feb PM EST

Microsoft is Holding a Surprise Event That Could be About Bing with ChatGPT

Microsoft announced a press event just days after the news of its partnership with OpenAI. The event will take place in the company's Redmond headquarter this February 7th, and will likely be about the integration of ChatGPT into Bing.

Microsoft Event

It will be an in-person event and the invites were sent out just minutes after Google officially announced its AI chatbot, which makes it more plausible for Microsoft to announce its integrated AI chatbot with the search engine Bing.

Google's AI chatbot "Bard" is an experimental conversational AI service, and is currently being tested by a small group of people, but will be released to the public in a few weeks. The project was in response to the Microsoft and Open AI partnership.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella mentioned in the invite that they were sharing some progress on a few exciting projects, according to The Verge, so the OpenAI and Microsoft partnership might not be the only topic that Microsoft will be sharing at the event.

Microsoft and OpenAI

There have already seen signs of the AI chatbot's role in the search engine Bing. Users have seen a chat section with a user interface that's similar to a chatbot, reports say. Microsoft already mentioned that it was "the new Bing" that provides complete answers to questions.

Microsoft started investing in OpenAI back in 2019 for the amount of $1 billion. It appears that the tech giant saw the potential of the AI company as they added another $2 billion after. This led to OpenAI having the resources to build the famous chatbot.

The tech giant has since extended its partnership with OpenAI and invested $10 billion more. Microsoft will be getting 75% of the AI company's profits until it reaches the amount that was invested. After that, Microsoft will only have a 49% stake in the company.

The integration could surely be a game changer in the search engine race. Brian Nowak, the bank's lead analyst on Alphabet, said so himself, stating that it could disrupt Google's position as the entry point for users on the Internet, as mentioned in CNBC.

OpenAI will not only be a part of the Bing search engine. There have already been rumors that it could also reach Microsoft products like Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Microsoft already launched Microsoft Teams Premium with features powered by OpenAI, reports say.

It's still unclear how big the partnership will be until it has been announced in the press release that the company is holding, but it is certainly big enough that it's got Google, the search engine currently dominating the market, nervous.

Microsoft appears to be playing the game as well seeing as they announced the date of the event just one day before Google's own event which is set to take place on February 8th. It would still be hard to top an already established chatbot like ChatGPT, but then again, we won't know until both parties presented their piece.