Bing | AI Updates | Microsoft AI Blogs http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/ai/blog/product/bing/ Tue, 12 Nov 2024 21:01:34 +0000 en-US hourly 1 An AI companion for everyone https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/10/01/an-ai-companion-for-everyone/ Tue, 01 Oct 2024 14:02:02 +0000 We’re living through a technological paradigm shift. In a few short years, our computers have learned to speak our languages, see what we see and hear what we hear. Yet technology for its own sake counts for nothing. What matters is how it feels to people and what impact it has on societies. It’s about

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We’re living through a technological paradigm shift. In a few short years, our computers have learned to speak our languages, see what we see and hear what we hear.

Yet technology for its own sake counts for nothing. What matters is how it feels to people and what impact it has on societies. It’s about how it changes lives, opens doors, expands minds and relieves pressure. It is perhaps the greatest amplifier of human well-being in history, one of the most effective ways to create tangible and lasting benefits for billions of people.

And yet technology is, and must always remain, in service to humanity: an enabler and a path to deepening our common bonds and shared understanding, our energy and imagination, our creativity and our capacity for everything from invention to forming relationships.

In the field of AI, we often get caught up in the technical details. We spend our time talking about parameters and compute. The focus is on training runs, datacenters and the latest techniques. This is natural and inevitable when operating on the frontiers of something new, where the details do really matter. But I think it’s important that in doing all of this, getting stuck right in the technical weeds, we don’t lose sight of not only what we are building, but why we are building it.

At Microsoft AI, we are creating an AI companion for everyone.

I truly believe we can create a calmer, more helpful and supportive era of technology, quite unlike anything we’ve seen before. Great technology experiences are about how you feel, not what’s under the hood. It should be about what you experience, not what we are building.

Copilot will be there for you, in your corner, by your side and always strongly aligned with your interests. It understands the context of your life, while safeguarding your privacy, data and security, remembering the details that are most helpful in any situation. It gives you access to a universe of knowledge, simplifying and decluttering the daily barrage of information, and offering support and encouragement when you want it.

Over time it’ll adapt to your mannerisms and develop capabilities built around your preferences and needs. We are not creating a static tool so much as establishing a dynamic, emergent and evolving interaction. It will provide you with unwavering support to help you show up the way you really want in your everyday life, a new means of facilitating human connections and accomplishments alike.

With your permission, Copilot will ultimately be able to act on your behalf, smoothing life’s complexities and giving you more time to focus on what matters to you. It’ll be an advocate for you in many of life’s most important moments. It’ll accompany you to that doctor’s appointment, take notes and follow up at the right time. It’ll share the load of planning and preparing for your child’s birthday party. And it’ll be there at the end of the day to help you think through a tricky life decision.

Some people worry that AI will diminish what makes us unique as humans. My life’s work has been to ensure it does precisely the opposite. We choose what we create. This is something we must do together. Our task is to ensure AI always enriches people’s lives and strengthens our bonds with others, while supporting our uniqueness and endlessly complex humanity.

This is a new era of technology that doesn’t just “solve problems,” it’s there to support you, teach you and help you. In this sense, Copilot really is different from that last wave of the web and mobile. This is the beginning of a fundamental shift in what’s possible for all of us. It’s a long journey that will take years. With our latest updates to Copilot, you are seeing only the first careful steps in this direction.

Patience and care with our deployments are at the very foundation of our approach. My commitment is to be accountable at every stage, work with you and listen to you. Respect and deep compassion for our users and for society is the core purpose behind everything we do. It comes first. This is a journey we promise to take together. I couldn’t be more excited to embark on it with you.

An image of the signature of Mustafa Suleyman, Executive Vice President and CEO of Microsoft AI.

Mustafa Suleyman, Executive Vice President and CEO of Microsoft AI

__________

From the Copilot Team

Our refreshed Copilot is focused on delivering a more intuitive design with more digestible, speedy and fluent answers. It now adapts to you with a warm tone and a distinct style, providing not only information but encouragement, feedback and advice as you navigate life’s everyday challenges — no matter how big or small. For example, in addition to helping you plan that big trip, it can also offer tips on how to keep your composure when, say, the back of your seat is getting kicked by a small child.

And we’re adding advanced capabilities like Voice and Vision that make it both more useful and feel more natural. These modalities change how we connect with technology, enabling people to seamlessly reflect with, learn from and work with their Copilot companions.

Copilot’s next phase

Today, we’re beginning to roll out the updated Copilot, including new and enhanced features:

Copilot Voice: We’re making it easier than ever to connect with your companion using Copilot Voice. This is the most intuitive and natural way to brainstorm on the go, ask a quick question or even just vent at the end of a tough day. Your companion will be personal to you, with four voice options to choose from.

Copilot Daily: Copilot Daily helps you kick off your morning with a summary of news and weather, all read in your favorite Copilot Voice, with more options like reminders of what’s coming soon. It’s an antidote for that familiar feeling of information overload. Clean, simple and easy to digest. Copilot Daily will only pull from authorized content sources. We are working with partners such as Reuters, Axel Springer, Hearst Magazines, USA TODAY Network and Financial Times, and plan to add more sources over time. We’ll also add additional personalization and controls in Copilot Daily over time.

Personalized Discover: Not sure where to start? Copilot Discover helps you get going, offering both a handy guide to its useful features and conversation starters, making jumping in simpler than ever. With your permission, these jumping off points are customized based on your interactions with other Microsoft services and will be further personalized over time according to your conversation history.

Copilot in Microsoft Edge: Copilot has been built right into your Microsoft Edge browser, quickly helping answer questions, summarize page content, translate text or rewrite a sentence. Now it’s even easier to access Copilot directly from the Microsoft Edge browser by simply typing @copilot into the address bar.

Copilot Labs: Copilot Labs gives people the opportunity to test out our experimental features that are still in development. It’s a chance to give feedback and help shape the experiences we create. We have two features we’re bringing to Labs initially, Copilot Vision and Think Deeper.

Copilot Vision: This is a profoundly new way of interacting with a computer. Copilot Vision sees what you see and can talk to you about it in real time. It understands the web page you’re viewing, both text and images, and can answer questions about its content, suggest next steps and help you without disrupting your workflow. Imagine you’re trying to furnish a new apartment, Copilot Vision can help you search for furniture, find the right color palette, think through your options on everything from rugs to throws and even suggest ways of arranging what you’re looking at.

Safety and security are our top priority here:

  • Copilot Vision sessions are entirely opt-in and ephemeral. None of the content Copilot Vision engages with is stored or used for training — the moment you end your session, data is permanently discarded.
  • The experience won’t work on all websites because we’ve taken important steps to put boundaries on the types of websites Copilot Vision can engage. We’re starting with a limited list of popular websites to help ensure it’s a safe experience for everyone.
  • Copilot Vision won’t work on paywalled and sensitive content for this preview. We’ve created it with both users’ and creators’ interests top of mind.
  • There is no specific processing of the content of a website you are browsing, nor any AI training. Copilot Vision simply reads and interprets the images and text it sees on the page for the first time along with you.
  • Before we launch broadly, we’ll continue to take feedback on all the above from early users in Copilot Labs, refine our safety measures and keep privacy and responsibility at the center of everything we do. Let us know what you think!

Think Deeper: Copilot can now reason through more complex questions. Think Deeper takes more time before responding, allowing Copilot to deliver detailed and step-by-step answers to challenging questions. We’ve designed it to be helpful for all kinds of practical and everyday challenges, like comparing two complex options side by side. Should I move to this city or that? What type of car best suits my needs? And so on. It’s an early Copilot Skill that’s still undergoing development, so we’ve placed it in our experimental Copilot Labs to test and get feedback.

We’re also making sure Copilot is easily available on all our platforms. On Copilot+ PCs and Windows we’re putting Copilot just a click away, unlocking new ways to interact with your PC. Check out today’s announcement on the latest with Copilot+ PCs and Windows.

Our work toward creating these kinds of experiences goes much further than just Copilot. Bing, Edge and MSN will also be more personalized, visual, cohesive and useful experiences than ever. For example, Bing generative search goes beyond simply finding an answer. Instead, it understands the search query, reviews millions of sources of information, dynamically matches content and generates search results on the fly.

While still under development, you’ll notice generative search rolling out across Bing starting today. To explore generative search in the US, simply search “Bing generative search” to choose from a selection of demo queries. We are also launching a new experience where users can more easily trigger Bing generative search for informational queries.

The refreshed Copilot is rolling out today on iOS and Android, through the Copilot web experience at copilot.microsoft.com and in Windows. We’re also excited to start rolling out Copilot to WhatsApp to help users there experience natural and engaging interactions with Copilot. Learn more here.

Notes:

  • Copilot Voice is initially available in English in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Copilot Voice will expand to more regions and languages soon.
  • Copilot Daily is rolling out from today starting in the United States and the United Kingdom with more countries coming soon.
  • Personalization in Copilot follows our Microsoft Privacy Statement, and people can opt out at any time in Settings. We’re still finalizing options for offering personalization to users in the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom.
  • Copilot Vision is rolling out to Copilot Labs soon and will be available to a limited number of Copilot Pro subscribers in the United States.
  • Think Deeper starts to roll out this week through Copilot Labs to a limited number of Copilot Pro users in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

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Announcing Microsoft Copilot, your everyday AI companion https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/09/21/announcing-microsoft-copilot-your-everyday-ai-companion/ Thu, 21 Sep 2023 15:00:20 +0000 Updated November 15, 2023: To simplify the user experience and make Copilot more accessible to everyone, Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise will now simply become Microsoft Copilot. For more information: https://aka.ms/BingIgnite We are entering a new era of AI, one that is fundamentally changing how we relate to and benefit from technology. With the

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Updated November 15, 2023: To simplify the user experience and make Copilot more accessible to everyone, Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise will now simply become Microsoft Copilot. For more information: https://aka.ms/BingIgnite

We are entering a new era of AI, one that is fundamentally changing how we relate to and benefit from technology. With the convergence of chat interfaces and large language models you can now ask for what you want in natural language and the technology is smart enough to answer, create it or take action. At Microsoft, we think about this as having a copilot to help navigate any task. We have been building AI-powered copilots into our most used and loved products – making coding more efficient with GitHub, transforming productivity at work with Microsoft 365, redefining search with Bing and Edge and delivering contextual value that works across your apps and PC with Windows.

Today we take the next step to unify these capabilities into a single experience we call Microsoft Copilot, your everyday AI companion. Copilot will uniquely incorporate the context and intelligence of the web, your work data and what you are doing in the moment on your PC to provide better assistance – with your privacy and security at the forefront. It will be a simple and seamless experience, available in Windows 11, Microsoft 365, and in our web browser with Edge and Bing. It will work as an app or reveal itself when you need it with a right click. We will continue to add capabilities and connections to Copilot across to our most-used applications over time in service of our vision to have one experience that works across your whole life.

Copilot will begin to roll out in its early form as part of our free update to Windows 11, starting Sept. 26 — and across Bing, Edge, and Microsoft 365 Copilot this fall. We’re also announcing some exciting new experiences and devices to help you be more productive, spark your creativity, and to meet the everyday needs of people and businesses.

  • With over 150 new features, the next Windows 11 update is one of our most ambitious yet, bringing the power of Copilot and new AI powered experiences to apps like Paint, Photos, Clipchamp and more right to your Windows PC.
  • Bing will add support for the latest DALL.E 3 model from OpenAI and deliver more personalized answers based on your search history, a new AI-powered shopping experience, and updates to Bing Chat Enterprise, making it more mobile and visual.
  • Microsoft 365 Copilot will be generally available for enterprise customers on Nov. 1, 2023, along with Microsoft 365 Chat, a new AI assistant that will completely transform the way you work.
  • Additionally, we introduced powerful new Surface devices that bring all these AI experiences to life for you, and they are available for pre-order beginning today.

New Windows 11 Update delivers over 150 new features, including bringing the power of Copilot to the PC

Today, we’re thrilled to share our next step toward making Windows the destination for the best AI experiences – with a new update that delivers our most personal experience yet coming on Sept. 26.

Here’s a look at some of what’s new in the latest update for Windows 11:

YouTube Video

  • Copilot in Windows (in preview) empowers you to create faster, complete tasks with ease and lessens your cognitive load – making once complicated tasks, simple. We’ve made accessing the power of Copilot seamless as it’s always right there for you on the taskbar or with the Win+C keyboard shortcut providing assistance alongside all your apps, on all screen sizes at work, school or at home.
  • Paint has been enhanced with AI for drawing and digital creation with the addition of background removal and layers as well as a preview of Cocreator that brings the power of generative AI to the Paint app.
  • Photos has also been enhanced with AI including new features to make editing your photos a breeze. With Background Blur you can make the subject of your photo stand out quickly and easily. The Photos app automatically finds the background in the photo, and with a single click, instantly highlights your subject and blurs out the background. We’ve improved search, with photos stored in OneDrive (home or personal) accounts, you can now quickly find the photo you’re looking for based on the content of the photo. You can also now find photos based on the location where they were taken.
  • Snipping Tool now offers more ways to capture content on your screen – with this update you can now extract specific text content from an image to paste in another application or, you can easily protect your sensitive information with text redaction by using text actions on the post capture screen. And, with the addition of sound capturing using audio and mic support, it’s easier to create compelling videos and content from your screen.
  • Clipchamp, now with auto compose, helps you with scenes suggestions, edits and narratives based on your images and footage automatically so you can create and edit videos to share with family, friends, and social media like a pro.
  • Notepad will start automatically saving your session state allowing you to close Notepad without any interrupting dialogs and then pick up where you left off when you return. Notepad will automatically restore previously open tabs as well as unsaved content and edits across those open tabs.
  • With the new Outlook for Windows, you can connect and coordinate your various accounts (including Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud, and more) in one app. Intelligent tools help you write clear, concise emails and seamlessly attach important documents and photos from OneDrive. To learn more, visit this link.
  • Modernized File Explorer, we are introducing a modernized File Explorer home, address bar and search box all designed to help you more easily access important and relevant content, stay up to date with file activity and collaborate without even opening a file. Also coming to File Explorer is a new Gallery feature designed to make it easy to access your photo collection.
  • New text authoring experiences to voice access and new natural voices in Narrator, continuing our ongoing commitment to making Windows 11 the most accessible version of Windows yet.
  • Windows Backup makes moving to a new Windows 11 PC easier than ever. With Windows Backup, transitioning most files, apps and settings from one PC to another, is seamless so everything is right where you left it, exactly how you like it.

These experiences, including Copilot in Windows and more will start to become available on Sept. 26 as part of our latest update to Windows 11, version 22H2.

Bing and Edge are redefining how we interact with the web

Today, we’re announcing new features in Bing and Edge to supercharge your day powered by the latest models delivering the most advanced capabilities for AI available. You can use Bing Chat today with Microsoft Edge or at bing.com/chat. Features will begin to roll out soon.

  • Personalized answers. Now, your chat history can inform your results. For example, if you’ve used Bing to track your favorite soccer team, next time you’re planning a trip it can proactively tell you if the team is playing in your destination city. If you prefer responses that don’t use your chat history, you can turn this feature off in Bing settings.
  • Copilot in Microsoft Shopping. From Bing or Edge, you can now more quickly find what you’re shopping for online. When you ask for information on an item, Bing will ask additional questions to learn more, then use that information to provide more tailored recommendations. And you can trust you’re getting the best price – in fact, in the last 12 months, shoppers have been offered more than $4 billion in savings on Microsoft Edge. Soon, you’ll also be able to use a photo or saved image as the starting point for shopping.

Colorful AI created image of astronaut.

 

  • DALL.E 3 model from OpenAI in Bing Image Creator. DALL.E 3 delivers a huge leap forward with more beautiful creations and better renderings for details like fingers and eyes. It also has a better understanding of what you’re asking for, which results in delivering more accurate images. We’re also integrating Microsoft Designer directly into Bing to make editing your creations even easier.
  • Content Credentials. As we continue to take a responsible approach to generative AI, we’re adding new Content Credentials which uses cryptographic methods to add an invisible digital watermark to all AI-generated images in Bing – including time and date it was originally created. We will also bring support for Content Credentials to Paint and Microsoft Designer.
  • Bing Chat Enterprise Updates. Since its introduction just two months ago, more than 160 million Microsoft 365 users now have access to Bing Chat Enterprise at no additional cost and the response has been incredible. Today we’re announcing that Bing Chat Enterprise is now available in the Microsoft Edge mobile app. We’re also bringing support for multimodal visual search and Image Creator to Bing Chat Enterprise. Boost your creativity at work with the ability to find information using images and creating them.

YouTube Video

Transforming work with Microsoft 365 Copilot, Bing Chat Enterprise and Windows

In March, we showed you what Microsoft 365 Copilot can do in the apps millions of people use every day across work and life – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams – using just your own words. After months of learning alongside customers like Visa, General Motors, KPMG and Lumen Technologies, we’re excited to share that Microsoft 365 Copilot will be generally available for enterprise customers on Nov. 1.

Today, we’re also introducing a new, hero experience in Microsoft 365 Copilot: Microsoft 365 Chat. You saw a glimpse of Microsoft 365 Chat in March, then called Business Chat — but rapid advancements over the last few months have taken it to a whole new level. Microsoft 365 Chat combs across your entire universe of data at work, including emails, meetings, chats, documents and more, plus the web. Like an assistant, it has a deep understanding of you, your job, your priorities and your organization. It goes far beyond simple questions and answers to give you a head start on some of your most complex or tedious tasks — whether that’s writing a strategy document, booking a business trip, or catching up on emails.

Over the past few years, the pace and volume of work have only increased. On a given workday, our heaviest users search for what they need 18 times, receive over 250 Outlook emails and send or read nearly 150 Teams chats.[1] Teams users globally are in three times more meetings each week than they were in 2020.[2] And on Windows, some people use 11 apps in a single day to get work done. [3] Microsoft 365 Chat tames the complexity, eliminates the drudgery and helps you reclaim time at work. Preview customers can access it today on Microsoft365.com, Teams, or in Bing when signed in with their work account. In the future you’ll be able to access it wherever you see the Copilot icon when signed in with your work account.

To empower you at work, we’re also introducing new capabilities for Copilot in Outlook, Word, Excel, Loop, OneNote and OneDrive. Bing Chat Enterprise —the first entry point into generative AI for many companies — is getting a few upgrades. And as part of our big Windows 11 update, Windows 365 Switch and Windows 365 Boot will be generally available making it even easier to access your Windows Cloud PC. This will help employees achieve more, while making it easier for IT to deploy, manage and secure. Check out the Microsoft 365 blog to learn more about how Microsoft 365, Bing Chat Enterprise and Windows are transforming the way we work.

Unleashing personal productivity and creativity with Designer and Copilot in Microsoft 365

Designer, the newest addition to our family of Microsoft 365 consumer apps, helps you quickly create stunning visuals, social media posts, invitations, and more using cutting-edge AI. Today, we’re showing some powerful new features, many of which will be powered by OpenAI’s Dall.E 3. Generative expand uses AI to extend your image beyond its borders, generative fill adds a new object or background, and generative erase can remove unwanted objects.[4] Dall.E 3 will also soon power the image generation experience in Designer, making it easy to add original, higher quality images to your design in seconds.

We’re also integrating Designer into Microsoft 365 Copilot for consumers — starting with Word. Designer uses the context of your document to propose visuals to choose from; you can make it more personal by uploading your own photos too. And within moments, you can transform a text-heavy document with custom graphics. We’re starting to test Microsoft 365 Copilot with a small group of Microsoft 365 consumer subscribers and look forward to expanding the preview to more people over time. Seventy percent of creators tell us one of the most difficult parts of the creation process is just getting started.[5] With creative tools like Designer, plus Bing Image Creator, Clipchamp and Paint, you can now have an immediate visual draft of almost anything — with a few simple prompts.

Introducing new Surface devices available for pre-order beginning today for people and businesses

There is no better stage to bring to life all of the incredible AI experiences from across Microsoft than our new Surface devices. Surface is at the forefront of device performance and processor technology. We have been investing in silicon advancements to augment this next wave of AI innovation, unlocking experiences like Windows Studio Effects in Surface Pro 9 with 5G and continuing to increase performance to run the latest AI models with powerful devices like the new Surface Laptop Studio 2.

  • The new Surface Laptop Studio 2 is the most powerful Surface we’ve ever built. Turbocharged with the latest Intel® Core processors and cutting-edge NVIDIA® Studio tools for creators-with up to 2x more graphics performance than MacBook Pro M2 Max, [6] Surface Laptop Studio brings together the versatility to create and the power to perform — a stunning 14.4″ PixelSense Flow touchscreen display and flexible design with three unique postures. And with new customizations brought to the haptic touchpad to improve accessibility – we’re proud to call it the most inclusive touchpad on any laptop today.

  • The new Surface Laptop Go 3 will turn heads with its balance of style and performance. It’s our lightest and most portable Surface Laptop, with a touchscreen display, and packed with premium features like an incredible typing experience and a Fingerprint Power Button, and it comes in four stylish colors. With Intel® Core i5 performance, all-day battery life, and robust RAM and storage options, it’s the perfect everyday laptop and stage for the latest AI tools from Microsoft.

Surface Go device with detachable keyboard, mouse and pen

 

  • Surface Go 4 for Business is our most portable Surface 2-in-1. This fall, the new Surface Go will be available exclusively for organizations to meet the growing needs of frontline workers and educators. We can’t wait to see how it will help businesses modernize and make their users more productive.
  • Surface Hub 3 is the premier collaboration device built for hybrid work, designed end-to-end by Microsoft. The Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows experience is familiar and intuitive on a brilliant 50” or 85” screen. The 50” Surface Hub 3 brings entirely new ways to co-create with Portrait, Smart Rotation and Smart AV. AI-enhanced collaboration tools – like Cloud IntelliFrame and Copilot in Whiteboard – shine on Surface Hub 3.

Surface on large docking station

  • 3D printable Adaptive Pen Grips for Surface Pen have been added to our lineup of adaptive accessories enabling more people to engage in digital inking and creation than before. They are available for purchase through Shapeways or as downloadable plans for 3D printing. To hear more about how we’re taking steps to close the disability divide, check out our video.

To pre-order one of our incredible new Surface devices, visit Microsoft.com, Bestbuy.com, and our Surface for Business page and blog to learn more about all of today’s new products.

The new era of AI with Copilot from Microsoft is here – and it’s ready for you

We believe that Microsoft is the place where powerful, useful AI experiences come together – simply, securely and responsibly – into the products you use most. Today, we showed you how we are not only increasing the usefulness of these experiences, but we are expanding them​. From Windows 11 as the destination for the best AI experiences to empower people using it at work, school and home​. To Microsoft 365, the most trusted productivity suite on the planet​. To Bing and Edge, the most innovative search engine and browser available​. All of it coming together on Windows 11 PCs like Surface​. And with Copilot helping you get things done, helping you create and connect to people you care about or the world around you​. We can’t wait to see what you can do with these experiences.

Learn more on the Microsoft 365 blog and the Security blog. And for all the blogs, videos and assets related to today’s announcements, please visit our microsite.

[1] Data represents top 20% of users by volume of searches across M365 services, emails received, and sent and read chats in Teams, respectively.

[2] Microsoft annual Work Trend Index 2023- Work Trend Index | Will AI Fix Work? (microsoft.com)

[3] Data reflects the top 20% Windows devices by app volume per day.

[4] Generative erase in Microsoft Designer is generally available to try today, with generative expand and fill coming soon.

[5] Survey of 941 creators commissioned by Microsoft in June 2022.

[6] Tested by Microsoft in September 2023 using CineBench 2024 GPU benchmark comparing Surface Laptop Studio 2 with RTX 2000 Ada Generation to MacBook Pro14” with M2 Max 19 12 core / 30 core configuration.

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Microsoft Build brings AI tools to the forefront for developers https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/05/23/microsoft-build-brings-ai-tools-to-the-forefront-for-developers/ Tue, 23 May 2023 15:00:04 +0000 You only need two simple letters to accurately convey the major shift in the technology space this year: A and I. Beyond those letters, however, is a complex, evolving and exciting way in which we work, communicate and collaborate. As you will see, artificial intelligence is a common thread as we embark on Microsoft Build,

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You only need two simple letters to accurately convey the major shift in the technology space this year: A and I. Beyond those letters, however, is a complex, evolving and exciting way in which we work, communicate and collaborate. As you will see, artificial intelligence is a common thread as we embark on Microsoft Build, our annual flagship event for developers.

It’s already been a landmark year for the industry, starting in January with the announcement of an extension of our partnership with OpenAI to accelerate AI breakthroughs and to ensure these benefits are broadly shared with the world. And in February, Microsoft announced an all-new, AI-powered Bing search engine and Edge browser to transform the largest software category in the world – search.

Since then, developments have accelerated at a rapid pace, with several key milestones along the way, including:

  • Greater availability of Azure OpenAI Service with added support for ChatGPT and OpenAI’s groundbreaking GPT-4 model.
  • Copilots across a wide range of users, including Dynamics 365 Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot for Power Platform.
  • Expansion of a new AI-powered Bing to the Windows 11 taskbar, mobile and Skype; Bing Image Creator to chat; and a full open preview of the platform, no waitlist required.

This is just the beginning of the new era of AI. That’s why Microsoft Build is so important. During this event, we’ll be showcasing how AI is redefining what and how developers build, as well as how AI is changing the future of work.

Before we get into the news, let’s talk about two concepts we are discussing at length during Microsoft Build: copilots and plugins.

A copilot is an application that uses modern AI and large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4 to assist people with complex tasks. Microsoft first introduced the concept of a copilot nearly two years ago with GitHub Copilot, an AI pair programmer that assists developers with writing code, and we continue to release copilots across many of the company’s core businesses.

We believe the copilot represents both a new paradigm in AI-powered software and a profound shift in the way that software is built – from imagining new product scenarios, to the user experience, the architecture, the services that it uses and how to think about safety and security.

Plugins are tools first introduced for ChatGPT, and more recently Bing, which augment the capabilities of AI systems, enabling them to interact with application programming interfaces (APIs) from other software and services to retrieve real-time information, incorporate company and other business data, perform new types of computations and safely take action on the user’s behalf. Think of plugins as the connection between copilots and the rest of the digital world.

With that said, let’s focus on the news and announcements we’re unveiling during Microsoft Build.

Growing the AI plugin ecosystem

Microsoft is announcing that we will adopt the same open plugin standard that OpenAI introduced for ChatGPT, enabling interoperability across ChatGPT and the breadth of Microsoft’s copilot offerings.

Developers can now use one platform to build plugins that work across both consumer and business surfaces, including ChatGPT, Bing, Dynamics 365 Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot.

And if you want to develop and use your own plugins with your AI application built on Azure OpenAI Service, it will, by default, be interoperable with this same plugin standard. This means developers can build experiences that enable people to interact with their apps using the most natural user interface: the human language.

As part of this shared plugin platform, Bing is adding to its support for plugins. In addition to previously announced plugins for OpenTable and Wolfram Alpha, we will also have Expedia, Instacart, Kayak, Klarna, Redfin and Zillow, among many others in the Bing ecosystem.

In addition to the common plugin platform, Microsoft is announcing that Bing is coming to ChatGPT as the default search experience. ChatGPT will now have a world-class search engine built-in to provide more up-to-date answers with access from the web. Now, answers are grounded by search and web data and include citations so users can learn more, all directly from within chat. The new experience is rolling out to ChatGPT Plus subscribers starting today and will be available to free users soon by simply enabling a plugin.

Developers can now extend Microsoft 365 Copilot with plugins 

We’re also announcing that developers can now integrate their apps and services into Microsoft 365 Copilot with plugins.

Plugins for Microsoft 365 Copilot include ChatGPT and Bing plugins, as well as Teams message extensions and Power Platform connectors – enabling developers to leverage their existing investments. And developers will be able to easily build new plugins for Microsoft 365 Copilot with the Microsoft Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio. Developers can also extend Microsoft 365 Copilot by bringing their data into the Microsoft Graph, contextualizing relevant and actionable information with the recently announced Semantic Index for Copilot.

More than 50 plugins from partners will be available for customers as part of the early access program, including Atlassian, Adobe, ServiceNow, Thomson Reuters, Moveworks and Mural, with thousands more available by the general availability of Microsoft 365 Copilot.

New Azure AI tooling to help developers build, operationalize deploy their own next-generation AI apps

It starts with our new Azure AI Studio. We’re making it simple to integrate external data sources into Azure OpenAI Service. In addition, we’re excited to introduce Azure Machine Learning prompt flow to make it easier for developers to construct prompts while taking advantage of popular open-source prompt orchestration solutions like Semantic Kernel.

In Azure OpenAI Service, which brings together advanced models including ChatGPT and GPT-4, with the enterprise capabilities of Azure, we’re announcing updates to enable developers to deploy the most cutting-edge AI models using their own data; a Provisioned Throughput SKU that offers dedicated capacity; and plugins that simplify integrating other external data sources into a customer’s use of Azure OpenAI Service. We now have more than 4,500 customers using Azure OpenAI Service.

Building responsibly together

At Microsoft, we’ve been committed to developing AI technology that has a beneficial impact and earns trust, while also sharing our own learnings and building new tools and innovations that help developers and businesses implement responsible AI practices in their own work and organizations. At Build, we’re introducing several new updates, including Azure AI Content Safety, a new Azure AI service to help businesses create safer online environments and communities. As part of Microsoft’s commitment to building responsible AI systems, Azure AI Content Safety will be integrated across Microsoft products, including Azure OpenAI Service and Azure Machine Learning.

We’re also introducing new tools to Azure Machine Learning, including expanding Responsible AI dashboard support for text and image data, in preview, enabling users to evaluate large models built with unstructured data during the model building, training and/or evaluation stage. This helps users identify model errors, fairness issues and model explanations before models are deployed, for more performant and fair computer vision and natural language processing (NLP) models. And prompt flow, in preview soon, provides a streamlined experience for prompting, evaluating and tuning large language models. Users can quickly create prompt workflows that connect to various language models and data sources and assess the quality of their workflows with measurements such as groundedness to choose the best prompt for their use case. Prompt flow also integrates Azure AI Content Safety to help users detect and remove harmful content directly in their flow of work.

In addition, Microsoft announced new media provenance capabilities coming to Microsoft Designer and Bing Image Creator in the coming months that will enable users to verify whether an image or video was generated by AI. The technology uses cryptographic methods to mark and sign AI-generated content with metadata about its origin.

Introducing Microsoft Fabric, a new unified platform for analytics

Today’s world is awash with data, constantly streaming from the devices we use, the applications we build and the interactions we have. And now, as we enter a new era defined by AI, this data is becoming even more important. Powering organization-specific AI experiences requires a constant supply of clean data from a well-managed and highly integrated analytics system. But most organizations’ analytics systems are a labyrinth of specialized and disconnected services.

Microsoft Fabric is a unified platform for analytics that includes data engineering, data integration, data warehousing, data science, real-time analytics, applied observability and business intelligence, all connected to a single data repository called OneLake.

It enables customers of all technical levels to experience capabilities in a single, unified experience. It is infused with Azure OpenAI Service at every layer to help customers unlock the full potential of their data, enabling developers to leverage the power of generative AI to find insights in their data.

With Copilot in Microsoft Fabric in every data experience, customers can use conversational language to create dataflows and data pipelines, generate code and entire functions, build machine learning models or visualize results. Customers can even create their own conversational language experiences that combine Azure OpenAI Service models and their data and publish them as plugins.

Accelerating an AI-powered future through partners

Our customers benefit from our partner collaborations, such as with NVIDIA, that enable organizations to design, develop, deploy and manage applications with the scale and security of Azure. NVIDIA will accelerate enterprise-ready generative AI with NVIDIA AI Enterprise Integration with Azure Machine Learning. Omniverse Cloud, only available on Azure, enables organizations to aggregate data into massive, high-performance models, connect their domain-specific software tools and enable multi-user live collaboration across factory locations. NVIDIA GPUs leveraging ONNX Runtime & Olive toolchain will support the implementation of accelerating AI models without needing a deeper knowledge of the hardware.

New capabilities for Microsoft Dev Box

Microsoft Dev Box, an Azure service that gives developers access to ready-to-code, project-specific dev boxes that are preconfigured and centrally managed, is introducing several new capabilities to enhance the developer experience and boost productivity. While in preview, we’ve seen many customers experimenting with Dev Box, and we’ve migrated more than 9,000 developers internally to the service for day-to-day software development.

Now, we’ve added additional features and capabilities, including customization using configuration-as-code and new starter developer images in Azure Marketplace that provide dev teams with ready-to-use images that can be customized further for specific dev team needs. Additionally, developers can now manage custom environments from a specialized developer portal, Azure Deployment Environments. Dev Box general availability will begin in July.

Unveiling a new home for developers on Windows 11 with Dev Home 

Dev Home will launch at Microsoft Build in preview as a new Windows experience developers can get from the Microsoft Store.

Dev Home makes it easy to connect to GitHub and configure cloud development environments like Microsoft Dev Box and GitHub Codespaces. Dev Home is open source and fully extensible, enabling developers to enhance their experience with a customizable dashboard and the tools they need to be successful.

Introducing Windows Copilot for Windows 11

Last fall at our Windows and Surface launch, Chief Product Officer Panos Panay talked about the power of AI to unlock new interaction models on the PC with Windows Studio Effects and DALL-E 2 in Microsoft Designer, and at CES he talked about how AI is going to reinvent the way people get things done on Windows.

This brings us to Windows Copilot.

Windows will be the first PC platform to centralize AI assistance with the introduction of Windows Copilot. Together, with Bing Chat and first- and third-party plugins, users can focus on bringing their ideas to life, completing complex projects and collaborating instead of spending energy finding, launching and working across multiple applications.

This builds on the integration we released into Windows 11 back in February that brought the new AI-powered Bing to the taskbar.

A preview of Windows Copilot will start to become available for Windows 11 in June.

As you can see, it’s going to be a busy time at Microsoft Build. To give you a sense of what developers are going to experience at the event, we’re expecting approximately 200,000 registered attendees, with 350 sessions and more than 125 hours of content over two days. In total, we’ll announce more than 50 new products and features.

For more information, make sure to watch keynotes on demand from Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella, Kevin Scott and Scott Guthrie on Day 1. On Day 2, watch the keynotes anchored by Rajesh Jha and Panos Panay. Additionally, you can explore all the news and announcements in the Book of News and read more stories and news about products from Microsoft Build here:

RELATED:

Watch Microsoft Build keynotes and view videos and photos

Microsoft outlines framework for building AI apps and copilots; expands AI plugin ecosystem

Bing at Microsoft Build 2023: Continuing the Transformation of Search

Empowering every developer with plugins for Microsoft 365 Copilot

Bringing the power of AI to Windows 11 – unlocking a new era of productivity for customers and developers with Windows Copilot and Dev Home

Build next-generation, AI-powered applications on Microsoft Azure

Introducing Microsoft Fabric: Data analytics for the era of AI

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Announcing the next wave of AI innovation with Microsoft Bing and Edge https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/05/04/announcing-the-next-wave-of-ai-innovation-with-microsoft-bing-and-edge/ Thu, 04 May 2023 07:18:46 +0000 Just three months ago, we unveiled the new AI-powered Microsoft Bing and Edge to reinvent the future of search with your copilot for the web. We aimed to tackle a universal problem with traditional search – that nearly half of all web searches go unanswered, resulting in billions of people’s searches falling short of the

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Just three months ago, we unveiled the new AI-powered Microsoft Bing and Edge to reinvent the future of search with your copilot for the web. We aimed to tackle a universal problem with traditional search – that nearly half of all web searches go unanswered, resulting in billions of people’s searches falling short of the mark. We launched the new Bing to bring you better search results, answers to your questions, the ability to create and compose, and with a new level of ease of use by being able to chat in natural language.  Bing combines powerful large language models like OpenAI’s GPT-4 with our immense search index for results that are current, cited and conversational – something you can’t get anywhere else but on Bing. This is fundamentally changing the way people find information.

In just 90 days, our customers have engaged in over a half a billion chats, using chat features to get summarized answers to help them with everything from finding the best place to travel for someone with pollen allergies, to organizing the last 10 years of worldwide volcanic activity into a table. We have also seen people create over 200 million images with Bing Image Creator. All up, Bing has grown to exceed 100 million daily active users and daily installs of the Bing mobile app have increased 4X since launch. As a result we are seeing growth of Bing share and it follows the eight straight quarters of growth in our Microsoft Edge browser share. We’re excited about continuing to make Bing more accessible by its introduction to the Windows taskbar, reaching over half a billion customers every month.

Entering the next generation of AI-powered search
Today I’m thrilled to share we are moving to the next generation of AI-powered Bing and Edge to transform the largest category of software in the world – search – by greatly expanding the vision and capabilities we think of as Your Copilot for the Web. This next generation is defined by:

  • Opening up Bing to more people by moving from Limited Preview to Open Preview and eliminating the waitlist for trial.
  • Moving from text-only search & chat to one that is incredibly more visual with rich image/video answers and coming shortly, new multimodal support.
  • Moving from single use chat/search sessions to multi-session productivity experiences with chat history and persistent chats within Edge.
  • Opening up platform capabilities so developers and third parties can build on top of Bing to help people take actions on their queries and complete tasks.


Bing now in Open Preview
Thanks to tremendous customer adoption, engagement and feedback, we’re ready to take the next step and are announcing the new Bing is now in Open Preview and no longer has a waitlist. This means that it will now be easier than ever for everyone to try the new Bing and Edge by simply signing into Bing with your Microsoft Account.

Making search more visual
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. 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. We’re introducing richer, more visual answers including charts and graphs and updated formatting of answers, helping you find the information you seek more easily.

The above video shows visual improvements to Bing chat.

We recently announced the integration of Bing Image Creator into the new Bing chat experience making Bing the only search experience with the ability to generate both written and visual content in one place, from within chat. And today, I’m excited to share that we are expanding Image Creator to all languages in Bing – that’s more than 100 languages – so now you can create images in your native language.

Video showing Bing Image Creator.

We’re also beginning our journey to a redesigned Microsoft Edge where one in four Bing chats originate. Edge continues to be your copilot for the web, the first to use AI, and the only browser with Bing built-in. As these changes begin to roll out, you’ll begin to see a sleeker and enhanced user interface including a streamlined look, rounded corners, organized containers and semi-transparent visual elements.

Lastly, we’re expanding what’s possible with multi-modal capabilities and are beginning the work to incorporate visual search in chat so you will be able to upload images and search the web for related content.

Making search more productive
Two of the most requested features we’ve heard are maintaining access to your chat history and being able to share and export. Starting shortly, you’ll be able to pick up where you left off and return to previous chats in Bing chat with chat history. And when you want to dig into something deeper and open a Bing chat result, your chat will move to your Edge sidebar, so you can keep your chat on hand while you browse. Over time, we’re exploring making your chats more personalized by bringing context from a previous chat into new conversations.

Chat history video.

Persistent chat video.

Starting soon, we’re also adding export and share functionalities into chat. For times when you want to easily share your conversation with others in social media or continue iterating on a newly discovered idea, you can export it directly – the format stays the same to make an easy transition to continue in collaborative tools like Microsoft Word.

Chat in Microsoft Edge will also soon have improved summarization capabilities for long documents, including PDFs and longer-form websites, making it easier to consume dense online content. We are also introducing Edge actions. Available in the coming weeks, people will soon be able to lean on AI to complete even more tasks with fewer steps. For example, if you want to watch a particular movie, actions in Edge will find and show you options in chat in the sidebar and then play the movie you want from where it’s available. Edge mobile will also soon include page context, so you can ask questions in Bing chat related to the mobile page you’re viewing. The compose feature in sidebar can also now tailor drafts based on feedback you give like tone, length, phrasing and more.

Edge actions video.


Compose video. 

Moving from a product to a platform
The new AI-powered Bing has already helped people more easily find or create what they are looking for, making chat a great tool for both understanding and taking action. The integration of Image Creator saves you time by completing the task of creating the image you need right within chat.

We’ll soon build third-party plug-ins into the Bing chat experience creating a platform for developers. For example, if you’re researching the latest restaurant for dinner in Bing chat, it will leverage OpenTable to help you find and book a reservation. Or, with Wolfram|Alpha, you can create powerful visualizations and get answers to complex science, math and human-curated data-based questions directly from Bing chat. We are working with our partners at OpenAI to make it easier and as consistent as possible for developers to take advantage of this opportunity. We believe these types of skills are a game-changer in the reinvention of search and to advance opportunities for developers in search. We look forward to sharing more details at Microsoft Build later this month.

Bing actions.

Continuing to build in the open, responsibly
As we’ve said from the beginning, responsible AI is at the center of every new experience we build with the new Bing and Edge. And getting the new Bing into preview so we can learn from real-world testing and feedback has been critical to our success and ability to expand the experience to more users. We believe innovating and learning in the open is part of a responsible approach. But we don’t stop there. Together with our partners at OpenAI, we’ve continued to implement safeguards to defend against harmful content based on what we’re learning and seeing in preview. Our teams continue to work 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. Learn more here about our approach to responsible AI with the new Bing.

If you haven’t tried the new Bing and Edge yet, now is the time to experience firsthand how we’re reinventing search with your copilot for the web. We’ll also continue our thoughtful and measured approach of gathering feedback and making rapid adjustments in preview. We continue to use this feedback to make weekly changes to the preview by incorporating the most requested features and updates and adding new experiences along the way. Experience the future of search by visiting bing.com today or downloading the Bing mobile app in your favorite app store.

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Create images with your words – Bing Image Creator comes to the new Bing https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/03/21/create-images-with-your-words-bing-image-creator-comes-to-the-new-bing/ Tue, 21 Mar 2023 13:00:12 +0000 Last month we introduced the new AI-powered Bing and Microsoft Edge, your copilot for the web – delivering better search, complete answers, a new chat experience and the ability to create content. Already, we have seen that chat is reinventing how people search with more than 100 million chats to date. We’ve seen people use

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Last month we introduced the new AI-powered Bing and Microsoft Edge, your copilot for the web – delivering better search, complete answers, a new chat experience and the ability to create content. Already, we have seen that chat is reinventing how people search with more than 100 million chats to date. We’ve seen people use chat in a variety of ways, from refining answers to complex questions to using it as a form of entertainment or for creative inspiration. Today we’re taking the chat experience to the next level by making the new Bing more visual.

We’re excited to announce we are bringing Bing Image Creator, new AI-powered visual Stories and updated Knowledge Cards to the new Bing and Edge preview. Powered by an advanced version of the DALL∙E model from our partners at OpenAI, Bing Image Creator allows you to create an image simply by using your own words to describe the picture you want to see. Now you can generate both written and visual content in one place, from within 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. Based on Bing data, images are one of the most searched categories – second only to general web searches. Historically, search was limited to images that already existed on the web. Now, there are almost no limits to what you can search for and create.

For those in the Bing preview, Bing Image Creator will be fully integrated into the Bing chat experience, rolling out initially in Creative mode. By typing in a description of an image, providing additional context like location or activity, and choosing an art style, Image Creator will generate an image from your own imagination. It’s like your creative copilot. Just type something like “draw an image” or “create an image” as a prompt in chat to get creating a visual for a newsletter to friends or as inspiration for redecorating your living room.

Chat experience with Bing Image Creator

 

Bing Image Creator preview will also be available in Microsoft Edge, making it the first and only browser with an integrated AI-powered image generator. To use Bing Image Creator in Edge, simply click the Bing Image Creator icon in the sidebar to create your image or invoke from Bing chat in Edge.

image of asset creator in edge

 

At Microsoft, our teams are guided by our Responsible AI principles and the Responsible AI Standard to help them develop and deploy AI systems responsibly. To curb the potential misuse of Image creator, we are working together with our partner OpenAI, who developed DALL∙E, to deliver an experience that encourages responsible use of Image Creator. We have ensured OpenAI’s safeguards, plus additional protections, have been incorporated into Image Creator. For example, we have put controls in place that aim to limit the generation of harmful or unsafe images. When our system detects that a potentially harmful image could be generated by a prompt, it blocks the prompt and warns the user. We also make it clear that Image Creator’s images are generated by AI, and we include a modified Bing icon in the bottom left corner of each image to help indicate that the image was created using Image Creator. We continue to work closely with OpenAI to build, test and review mitigations for our integrations.

Since making the new Bing available in preview, we have been testing it with people to get real-world feedback to learn and improve the experience. People used it in some ways we expected and others we didn’t. In this spirit of learning and continuing to build new capabilities responsibly, we’re rolling out Bing Image Creator in a phased approach by flighting with a set of preview users before expanding more broadly. We will initially only include Image Creator in the Creative mode of Bing chat and our intention is to make it available in Balanced and Precise mode over time. We are also working on some ongoing optimizations for how Image Creator works in multi-turn chats. We continue to believe the best way to bring these technologies to market is to test them carefully, in the open, where everyone can provide feedback.

New AI-Powered Visual Stories and Knowledge Cards

To support the growing demand for more visual search experiences, we are also making Stories and Knowledge Cards 2.0 available to all Bing users. Stories provide a more engaging way to search and interact with content, offering images and short videos. Also new to Bing users today, Knowledge Cards 2.0 is an AI-powered infographic-inspired experience that provides fun facts and key information at a glance. It’s been updated to include interactive, dynamic content like charts, graphs, timelines, visual stories and more. With these updates and more coming, our goal is to deliver more immersive experiences in Bing and Edge that make finding answers and exploring the web more interesting, useful and fun.

knowledge card showing information about corgis

knowledge card showing information about Rio in Brazil

 

Availability

Bing Image Creator integrated into Bing chat will begin to roll out to Bing preview users on both desktop and mobile starting today. For those not in the new Bing preview, the preview experience of Image Creator is now available at bing.com/create for Bing users around the world in English. We will add more language support over time.

Bing Image Creator is also available in Microsoft Edge from the Image Creator icon in sidebar for both desktop and mobile starting today for Edge users around the world in English. We will also soon integrate Image Creator into Edge from the new Bing button in chat mode in the preview version of Edge.

If you’re not yet in the new Bing preview, you can sign up for the waitlist today. We’re adding more people every day. Thanks for your continued feedback and we look forward to sharing more updates soon.

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The new Bing preview experience arrives on Bing and Edge Mobile apps; introducing Bing now in Skype https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/02/22/the-new-bing-preview-experience-arrives-on-bing-and-edge-mobile-apps-introducing-bing-now-in-skype/ Thu, 23 Feb 2023 02:45:49 +0000 Two weeks ago, we introduced the world to the all new AI-powered Bing and Microsoft Edge — your copilot for the web. Since then, based on strong and positive product feedback and engagement, we’ve welcomed more than one million people in 169 countries off the waitlist into the preview.  We continue to expand the preview to more

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Two weeks ago, we introduced the world to the all new AI-powered Bing and Microsoft Edge — your copilot for the web. Since then, based on strong and positive product feedback and engagement, we’ve welcomed more than one million people in 169 countries off the waitlist into the preview.  We continue to expand the preview to more people every day. Our preview community is actively using the breadth of new features across Search, Answers, Chat and Creation with total engagement up significantly. Feedback on the new capabilities is positive, with 71% of testers giving the new Bing a “thumbs up” on the new search and answers capabilities. We’re even more excited about the breadth of feedback we are receiving on where and how we can improve and we are acting on it with regular updates.

We’re seeing some interesting use cases and queries in preview testing. I recently learned about a father showing his son the new Bing, and together they discovered and created in a way not easily done with today’s search engines. They started off by creating sci-fi stories using simple prompts in chat, eventually leading to the development of a video game idea where Bing not only helped create a plot, but also generated the code to input directly into Scratch – a visual programming tool. In just a few queries, they captured the wonder and potential of the new Bing and Edge. We are hearing many similar stories on how the new Bing is helping people discover and create in ways previously not possible.

Sign up for the new Bing and Edge mobile apps

In this spirit of learning and continuing to build new capabilities, we’re excited to share today the preview release of the new Bing and Edge mobile apps.  We’re beginning to roll out the incredible capabilities of the new Bing and Edge on your smartphone along with some exciting new features, such as voice input. In addition, we are creating a new chat experience, beginning with Skype, to enhance your social communications with your friends and family.

The new Bing and Edge goes mobile; Now introducing voice access

Because we know 64% of searches occur on mobile phones, we are releasing all new Bing and Edge mobile apps to serve as your copilot for the web even when you are away from your desktop.

screen shot of dinner recipe

Imagine an unexpected layover in a new city. As you plan a quick afternoon stop in Tokyo, you ask Bing to help find a place to store your luggage. It then provides tips for navigating the metro system on your way to the famed Shinjuku station. With a few hours to explore, Bing creates a short itinerary, helping you get the most out of your quick visit, and even translates along the way.

Available on iOS and Android today, the Bing mobile app offers a fresh look and experience. Tapping the Bing icon at the bottom will invoke a chat session, where you can engage in all the same ways you can from the desktop. Ask simple or complex questions and receive answers and citations. Choose how you want your answers displayed – bullet points, text or simplified responses. Explore the Bing chat experience to refine your query or compose an email, poem or list.

With the introduction of the new Bing mobile app, we’re adding one of the preview community’s most requested features – voice. Available on mobile and on desktop, voice search provides more versatility in how you can deliver prompts and receive answers from Bing.

In addition, those who have access to the preview will be able to utilize the new Bing experience from the homepage of the Microsoft Edge mobile app.

Bing goes social with Skype

screenshot of family chat with help about email issue

To better assist you when you are collaborating with friends and family, we are introducing AI-powered Bing for Skype. More than 36 million people use Skype daily to connect through phone calls and chats across borders and around the world and the new Bing is going to enable some helpful and fun new scenarios and capabilities.

Imagine having a copilot for your friends and family as you stay connected and plan your next get together. Simply add Bing to the group, as you would any Skype contact, and now you can ask Bing to answer questions and provide information for the entire group. For example, if your family is chatting about the next family reunion, you can simply ask Bing for suggestions on travel destinations, expected weather forecasts and interesting events around your time of travel, and everyone in the chat will get access to the results. When you are catching up with friends, you can ask Bing to simply fetch information from the web, for example, the latest news or last night’s award shows to add to your conversation.

You can choose how you want your answers to be displayed – bullet points, text or a simplified response. Bing can accommodate your preferences. Fluent in more than 100 languages, and capable of translating between them, Bing can offer unique value to this global communications tool.

screen shot of phone displaying suggestions for things to do during layover in Spain

Available worldwide in preview today, the new Bing in Skype can provide helpful, real-time answers to all your questions. As we learn and fine-tune this amazing new capability, we envision bringing it to other communications apps, like Teams, in the future.

If you’re currently on the Bing preview experience, these features are available to you later today. In the first few days of testing these mobile experiences, you may occasionally find connectivity issues in low-bandwidth situations. We’re aware of the issue and are working on a fix.

If you’re among those awaiting access, we appreciate both your patience and your excitement. We’re working as fast as possible to onboard more people every day. If you’re interested in trying it for yourself, please sign up for the Bing preview today.  We hope you enjoy the new capabilities and please keep the feedback coming so we can continue to improve the product for you.

*Skype user interface will vary during initial rollout.

The post The new Bing preview experience arrives on Bing and Edge Mobile apps; introducing Bing now in Skype appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

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The new Bing preview experience arrives on Bing and Edge Mobile apps; introducing Bing now in Skype https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/02/22/the-new-bing-preview-experience-arrives-on-bing-and-edge-mobile-apps-introducing-bing-now-in-skype/ Wed, 22 Feb 2023 11:45:13 +0000 Two weeks ago, we introduced the world to the all new AI-powered Bing and Microsoft Edge — your copilot for the web. Since then, based on strong and positive product feedback and engagement, we’ve welcomed more than one million people in 169 countries off the waitlist into the preview.  We continue to expand the preview

The post The new Bing preview experience arrives on Bing and Edge Mobile apps; introducing Bing now in Skype appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

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Two weeks ago, we introduced the world to the all new AI-powered Bing and Microsoft Edge — your copilot for the web. Since then, based on strong and positive product feedback and engagement, we’ve welcomed more than one million people in 169 countries off the waitlist into the preview.  We continue to expand the preview to more people every day. Our preview community is actively using the breadth of new features across Search, Answers, Chat and Creation with total engagement up significantly. Feedback on the new capabilities is positive, with 71% of testers giving the new Bing a “thumbs up” on the new search and answers capabilities. We’re even more excited about the breadth of feedback we are receiving on where and how we can improve and we are acting on it with regular updates.

We’re seeing some interesting use cases and queries in preview testing. I recently learned about a father showing his son the new Bing, and together they discovered and created in a way not easily done with today’s search engines. They started off by creating sci-fi stories using simple prompts in chat, eventually leading to the development of a video game idea where Bing not only helped create a plot, but also generated the code to input directly into Scratch – a visual programming tool. In just a few queries, they captured the wonder and potential of the new Bing and Edge. We are hearing many similar stories on how the new Bing is helping people discover and create in ways previously not possible.

Sign up for the new Bing and Edge mobile apps

In this spirit of learning and continuing to build new capabilities, we’re excited to share today the preview release of the new Bing and Edge mobile apps.  We’re beginning to roll out the incredible capabilities of the new Bing and Edge on your smartphone along with some exciting new features, such as voice input. In addition, we are creating a new chat experience, beginning with Skype, to enhance your social communications with your friends and family.

The new Bing and Edge goes mobile; Now introducing voice access

Because we know 64% of searches occur on mobile phones, we are releasing all new Bing and Edge mobile apps to serve as your copilot for the web even when you are away from your desktop.

screen shot of dinner recipeImagine an unexpected layover in a new city. As you plan a quick afternoon stop in Tokyo, you ask Bing to help find a place to store your luggage. It then provides tips for navigating the metro system on your way to the famed Shinjuku station. With a few hours to explore, Bing creates a short itinerary, helping you get the most out of your quick visit, and even translates along the way.

Available on iOS and Android today, the Bing mobile app offers a fresh look and experience. Tapping the Bing icon at the bottom will invoke a chat session, where you can engage in all the same ways you can from the desktop. Ask simple or complex questions and receive answers and citations. Choose how you want your answers displayed – bullet points, text or simplified responses. Explore the Bing chat experience to refine your query or compose an email, poem or list.

With the introduction of the new Bing mobile app, we’re adding one of the preview community’s most requested features – voice. Available on mobile and on desktop, voice search provides more versatility in how you can deliver prompts and receive answers from Bing.

In addition, those who have access to the preview will be able to utilize the new Bing experience from the homepage of the Microsoft Edge mobile app.

Bing goes social with Skype

To better assist you when you are collaborating with friends and family, we are introducing AI-powered Bing for Skype. More than 36 million people use Skype daily to connect through phone calls and chats across borders and around the world and the new Bing is going to enable some helpful and fun new scenarios and capabilities.screenshot of family chat with help about email issue

Imagine having a copilot for your friends and family as you stay connected and plan your next get together. Simply add Bing to the group, as you would any Skype contact, and now you can ask Bing to answer questions and provide information for the entire group. For example, if your family is chatting about the next family reunion, you can simply ask Bing for suggestions on travel destinations, expected weather forecasts and interesting events around your time of travel, and everyone in the chat will get access to the results. When you are catching up with friends, you can ask Bing to simply fetch information from the web, for example, the latest news or last night’s award shows to add to your conversation.

You can choose how you want your answers to be displayed – bullet points, text or a simplified response. Bing can accommodate your preferences. Fluent in more than 100 languages, and capable of translating between them, Bing can offer unique value to this global communications tool.

screen shot of phone displaying suggestions for things to do during layover in SpainAvailable worldwide in preview today, the new Bing in Skype can provide helpful, real-time answers to all your questions. As we learn and fine-tune this amazing new capability, we envision bringing it to other communications apps, like Teams, in the future.

If you’re currently on the Bing preview experience, these features are available to you later today. In the first few days of testing these mobile experiences, you may occasionally find connectivity issues in low-bandwidth situations. We’re aware of the issue and are working on a fix.

If you’re among those awaiting access, we appreciate both your patience and your excitement. We’re working as fast as possible to onboard more people every day. If you’re interested in trying it for yourself, please sign up for the Bing preview today.  We hope you enjoy the new capabilities and please keep the feedback coming so we can continue to improve the product for you.

*Skype user interface will vary during initial rollout.

The post The new Bing preview experience arrives on Bing and Edge Mobile apps; introducing Bing now in Skype appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

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