ChatGPT now uses Microsoft Bing as its default search engine

Many people confuse a search engine with a chatbot, which can often be seen recently in the unfulfilled expectations of the ChatGPT chatbot, where many people expect a search function from it, while its mission is a generative function (but even in this it sometimes shows very strange results). Although these technologies are somewhat related, they are not the same, but we can certainly expect a greater intermingling of them in the future. Microsoft as a large investor in OpenAI pushed through Bing search engine to ChatGPT, which now approaches the chatbot functions in Bing, where the GPT system had a different role than in ChatGPT. In Bing, GPT served more as an interpreter of results, i.e. its generative function here consisted in retelling the searched things (they were found by Bing, not by ChatGPT). And just something like that will now also work in ChatGPT, where it will get better search functions thanks to Bing.

ChatGPT will now, for example, be able to search and directly add citations to sources in the answers if someone wants to search for something, and not just create new content based on data learned in the past. This also means that ChatGPT will no longer be stuck on the autumn 2021 data it was trained on, but will now be able to answer questions about current topics from the past 1.5 years as well. ChatGPT Plus subscribers will be able to try the feature first, but it will also be included in the standard free version later. This search engine feature will be available as a plug-in in ChatGPT. It is the architecture of the plug-in that should ensure interoperability between Bing Chat, ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, or other applications.

Let’s note here that Microsoft has so far unsuccessfully tried to break through with Bing at the expense of Google, and this could help it. Maybe in a few years we won’t be “Googling” but “Binging”. It is possible that the chatbot will be the savior technology for the search engine that will help it overcome Google, and when the two technologies will complement each other, which could cause the chatbot and the search engine to probably merge into one in the future thanks to this symbiosis. Let’s add one more point of interest. Microsoft’s Amy Hood said that for every percentage point that Bing increases its market share, advertising revenue for Microsoft will increase by $2 billion.