When Microsoft and OpenAI announced their renewed partnership in January, the two companies also revealed that Bing search would soon boast AI-enhanced lookup capabilities. Little did we know at the time, that Bing search has been powered for the past five weeks, not by the existing then-state-of-the-art GPT-3.5 model but by its even more robust successor, GPT-4.
Microsoft envisions Bing — and really Google is doing much the same with Bard — serving as a pseudo-gatekeeper to the rest of internet's information, not unlike what AOL's early America Online service once did. Rather than direct users to other websites where they can find the information and context they seek on their own, these companies are looking to have generative AI systems (Bard and Bing) automatically summarize and display that information without ever leaving the branded search page. Any additional relevant context that the user might have stumbled across during their independent research will similarly be deigned by the algorithm. Users can give GPT-4 a spin — and experience our new, algorithmically-dictated reality firsthand — by signing up for the Bing Preview waitlist.