New Windows 11 update puts Bing Chat front and center

As part of Microsoft’s new Windows 11 feature update, users will be able to access the company’s new AI-powered Bing directly from the taskbar.

In a blog post announcing the update, Microsoft Chief Product Officer Panos Panay said “the search box is one of the most widely used features on Windows” and therefore combining it with the new AI-powered Bing will empower users “to find the answers [they’re] looking for, faster than ever before.”

In order to access this new search box, users who are in the Bing preview will need to install the latest Windows 11 update. However, those who do not currently have access to the preview will need to sign up to the wait list.

Bing Chat is underpinned by GPT-4

Bing Chat allows users to ask questions and receive answers from GPT-4, the latest version of the artificial intelligence (AI) language model built by research lab OpenAI. However, while it has only been available to the public since February 7, a number of interactions with the chatbot have already made headlines, with the chatbot even professing its love to one New York Times reporter and telling him he should get a divorce.

Earlier this month, Microsoft also updated its Edge browser with AI capabilities and two new functionalities: chat and compose. As a result, users can, for example, ask for a summary of a lengthy financial report, and then use the chat function to ask for a comparison with a competing company’s financials.

A user can also ask Edge to help compose content, such as a LinkedIn post, by giving it a few prompts to get started. The ethics of AI-generated content are already being hotly debated, with the education nonprofit institution International Baccalaureate deciding this week that students can quote Chat GPT in their essays, as long as they cite the technology in the same way they would any other source and not try to pass the content off as their own.