Microsoft (MSFT) and OpenAI are drawing closer together, with the two companies announcing that Microsoft’s Bing search engine will merge with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The new partnership was revealed in the course of Microsoft’s Build developer conference, held on Tuesday. It likely means that Bing will reach a broader swath of potential users, and gain more market share in the search engine wars.
The integrated search engine will be available for ChatGPT Plus subscribers starting immediately, and will be made available to users of ChatGPT’s free service in the future via a plugin.
Microsoft CVP and Consumer Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Mehdi noted the integration will allow ChatGPT to offer more up-to-date answers to user questions than ChatGPT alone would be able to provide. Currently, ChatGPT is not drawing upon a steady stream of new information, but rather supplies answers based upon its training on a specific dataset. The new integration will allow the chatbot to formulate answers to questions about timely topics.
In addition, by adding Bing to ChatGPT, more users will be exposed to Microsoft’s search engine. The company already revamped the search engine in February, integrating generative AI capabilities to the software, which allowed it to leap ahead of market-leader Google’s search engine.
However since then, Google has launched its own chatbot, and introduced a new version of its search engine which contains generative AI functionality.
Microsoft understands that it will not vanquish Google overnight. The company has previously said it is pursuing a strategy of picking off small pieces of its rival’s user base, one at a time. Microsoft’s own analysis said that just 1% of market share in the search market is worth $2 billion.
Less than one week before the Bing announcement, OpenAI had released its ChatGPT app for iOS. The company has said there is also a version for Android users in the works.
In addition to adding Bing to ChatGPT, Microsoft also announced it is adding generative AI capabilities to Windows, in the form of Windows Copilot. It will also offer third-party plugins for its AI products, as well as a service which will let enterprise customers create their own chatbots using Microsoft’s Bing technology.
In addition to Google, Microsoft will be facing competition from Meta Platforms (META), which is also heavily investing in the field. According to Fortune, Apple (APPL) is also building staff for its own generative AI program.
