ChatGPT no longer needs to rely on its own models or plugins to provide information to users: Microsoft has announced Bing Search is integrating into ChatGPT to provide more relevant — and potentially newer — responses. Bing will act as the “default search experience,” allowing ChatGPT to pull answers from the internet and provide citations.
Microsoft and OpenAI have worked together closely over the last few months, with Bing, itself, running on GPT-4 (with some tailoring for searches). Bing works by displaying responses in detailed or summary form and sources facts and suggestions with footnotes of sorts — features it can bring to ChatGPT to, possibly, provide more precise information. Previously, ChatGPT relied solely on individual plugins to access any recent information.
Other new Bing updates are plugin-centric, including a single platform for developers to create and submit them for ChatGPT, Bing, Microsoft 365 Copilot and more. Bing is adding a slew of companies to its in-chat plugin options, such as Expedia, Zillow and Klarna, for targeted communication on topics like travel and shopping. The common plugin platform is also being natively integrated into Microsoft Edge — where Bing is already built-in.
The exact timeline for each of these developments isn’t entirely clear beyond Bing’s immediate integration into ChatGPT for Plus subscribers. According to Microsoft, free ChatGPT accounts will be able to access Bing through a plugin “soon,” and company plugin experiences will become available in the “coming weeks.”
This story originally appeared on Engadget
