Artificial intelligence (AI) is heating up the competition for search engines.
OpenAI recently announced that it would start using Microsoft Bing as the default search experience for ChatGPT. Experts say the move could bring Bing to the top of the search game.
"Bing and Google often return different results due to differences in their algorithms," digital entrepreneur Dmytro Sokhach told Lifewire via email. "By using Bing, AI might access a somewhat different view of the web than it would get from Google alone, which can increase diversity in the information AI can learn and utilize."
The Bing Advantage
Subscribers to the ChatGPT Plus service can add Bing search by using a plugin, Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft's consumer marketing chief, said in the Bing blog post. ChatGPT's free service users will also soon be able to use Bing.
"ChatGPT will now have a world-class search engine built-in to provide timelier and more up-to-date answers with access from the web," Mehdi wrote. "Now, ChatGPT answers can be grounded by search and web data and include citations so you can learn more—all directly from within chat."
The move to integrate Bing is part of a push by Microsoft and OpenAI to grow the AI plugin ecosystem. The companies claim better support for plugins means users will get more relevant recommendations based on conversations.
Bing still lags behind Google in terms of the overall relevance of results but has a richer search result experience for many types of queries, William Underwood, the head of the AI company Optiversal said in an email.
"Sometimes when searching, a person needs an intelligent sounding board that knows the information, but this information doesn't have to be up-to-date," he added. "But other times, a person who is searching the internet needs something updated more recently than 'As of my last update in September 2021,' which is what ChatGPT will always tell you (and other AI search methods have their own cut-off dates)."
The Future of AI Search
For all its promise, the current generation of AI-powered search engines has significant drawbacks, including sometimes providing wrong information. But Justin Lane, the CEO of CulturePulse AI, said in an email that could soon change.
Future versions of AI search engines will be "more truthful, making it more reliable," he said. Tech companies are "adding more structured knowledge networks into the AI so that it understands the relationships between different things."
Macosko also predicted that AI search would see rapid improvements.
"Bard already is able to do much more than Google alone was able to do just a few months ago, and the addition of Open AI's ChatGPT technology into Bing has been a huge improvement for Bing," he added. "The future of search will definitely be more of a conversation than the old days of searching the internet."