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Bing rolls out a new search interface that might steal you away from Google
- Bing will now display rich AI-generated information boxes in response to select search queries.
- The move comes just shortly after Google was forced to backpedal on AI-generated search overviews.
- Bing’s AI summaries haven’t faced much controversy since their debut in 2023.
Just weeks after Google took its foot off the accelerator with AI-generated overviews in search results, Microsoft is doubling down on the strategy instead. Starting today, Bing’s search pages will display a split view with traditional web results on the right and AI-powered information boxes on the left.
According to Microsoft’s announcement post, only a small percentage of user queries will see Bing’s new generative search experience. The provided example of “what is a spaghetti western?” does bring up the new Bing interface. However, other queries we tried (such as “what is Android”) still only display a small AI-generated overview at the top of a conventional result page.
Bing was the first search engine to embed AI responses directly within search pages early last year, shortly after Microsoft’s increased investment in ChatGPT creator OpenAI. The move was much better received than Google’s attempt, likely because it provided inline links to sources and citations similar to Wikipedia. Microsoft also relies on OpenAI’s GPT-4 model, which likely doesn’t hallucinate as much as Google’s language models.
As for the quality of results, I’ve used Bing as my only search engine since last year partially because of the AI-generated summaries. The automatic responses are typically helpful and well-rounded as they rely on multiple sources rather than quoting a single website. Today’s update simply expands generative AI’s presence on-screen, so it shouldn’t result in any major goof-ups as we saw with Google’s AI Overviews.
Even though Microsoft is shunting traditional web results to the side with this update, it maintains that the increased information won’t negatively impact website traffic or publisher revenue. The announcement post reads, “Early data indicates that this experience maintains the number of clicks to websites and supports a healthy web ecosystem.”
Microsoft says generative AI in search doesn't reduce traffic to websites.
Bing’s new AI section does retain clickable links to independent sources. However, Microsoft’s own example screenshot above shows an overwhelming preference for just the top search result. The older design offered three source links in a carousel-style interface closer to the top of the page.
Web publishers have opposed AI overviews because of the knock-on impact to traffic. However, this isn’t new — search engines have slowly evolved into answering engines ever since Google’s featured snippet debuted a decade ago. AI is simply the next step, as evidenced by startups like Perplexity that threaten Microsoft and Google’s search dominance.