Microsoft has announced a range of new features for its AI-powered Microsoft Bing and Edge copilots, including chat history and multimodal support.
Users will be able to pick up where they left off with new persistent chats in both Bing chat and the Edge sidebar, while a new export option for chat aims to enable more collaboration on output.
If a link is opened from a Bing Chat answer, the link can open in Edge while shifting the original Bing Chat into the browser’s side pane, allowing the user to simultaneously continue chatting while browsing.
The idea behind the new feature is that by making Bing Chat accessible within the Microsoft Edge browser, users could use the pairing as an effective research tool.
One piece of information gleaned from a web page can become a question sent to Bing Chat, which can then direct the user to new information - a process to repeat until the research task is fully completed.
Workers in specific sectors may also benefit from future updates Microsoft teased that aim to personalize Bing Chats, bringing context from previous sessions to new conversations.
Research tasks that are repeated often, for example, could become quicker to complete with smarter suggestions.
Elsewhere, Microsoft also unveiled improved visual features for Bing chat, including images for search results, charts, and graphs.
Bing Image Creator, the firm's response to other generative AI art generators such as Midjourney and Dall-E, now supports up to 100 input languages.
In time, it has said it will incorporate multimodal capabilities such as visual input for chat.
“We know from research that the human brain processes visual information about 60,000 times faster than text, making visual tools a critical way people search, create, and gain understanding,” said Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president and consumer chief marketing officer at Microsoft.
Breaking down the barriers to 3D design
Designing for the future
“Bing has always been known for its visual experiences including features like Knowledge Cards and visual search. And now we’re delivering those same experiences in chat.”
With productivity gains in mind, Microsoft has improved the tool's ability to summarize longer documents and enabled Edge to complete actions such as opening media content or specific web pages in response to chat input.
Edge Mobile will gain a similar feature, with new capabilities to summarize mobile web page content due to be released in the coming weeks.
To broaden the reach of Microsoft’s Bing and Edge AI assistant, third-party plugins will soon allow developers to integrate their apps or websites within the Bing chat experience.
Microsoft gave the example of a user asking a math question in Bing chat and receiving a complex visualization through an integration with the answer engine Wolfram Alpha.
Bing exceeded 100 million daily users in March, in large part due to the interest in the search engine’s new GPT-4-powered, generative AI capabilities.
Users can try out the features in open preview now, and Microsoft has stated that updates will regularly follow.
