The new Microsoft Bing drafted the introduction for this week’s GeekWire Podcast, with this prompt: Write an intro for a GeekWire Podcast episode about the new Microsoft Bing search engine, powered by OpenAI technology, based on an interview by Todd Bishop with Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft executive on the Microsoft campus after the announcement this week.
Here’s what it produced:
Hello and welcome to GeekWire, the podcast where we bring you the latest news and insights from the tech world. I’m your host, Todd Bishop, and today we have a very special episode for you. We’re going to talk about the new Microsoft Bing search engine, powered by OpenAI technology, that was announced this week. This is a huge deal, because it means that Bing can now understand natural language queries, generate relevant answers, and even create original content on the fly. To find out more about this breakthrough, I visited the Microsoft campus and interviewed Yusuf Mehdi, one of the executives behind the project. He told me how Bing and OpenAI teamed up, what challenges they faced, and what this means for the future of search and AI. So stay tuned, because you don’t want to miss this episode of GeekWire.
Not bad! I could quibble with elements of it, especially the lack of objectivity in its assessment of its own significance, but I decided to go with it verbatim, in the spirit of illustrating the capabilities of the technology, especially its ability to not only understand but interpret the meaning and context of queries.
Given that, I should note that everything else is in my own words in this post and episode. I tried having Bing draft multiple iterations of the headline but it wasn’t on the mark. I’ll keep refining my approach for future attempts.
Mehdi is a Microsoft veteran of more than 31 years, who has been involved in the development and launch of some of the company’s biggest products, including Windows 95 and Windows 11, the Xbox One console, and past versions of Microsoft’s search engine. He’s currently the corporate vice president and consumer chief marketing officer.
He spoke with me on the Microsoft campus on Tuesday a few hours after introducing the new Bing search engine and an updated version of Microsoft’s Edge browser with a sidebar that uses AI to generate and analyze web content.
“I think this has the potential to be one of these special moments, like Windows 95, or the original Internet Explorer, the Xbox One. It’s one of those moments,” Mehdi said. “And the reason I believe that is because I do think that this is the beginning of a new generation of search.”
Topics of our discussion include the potential impact of AI search on content creators, Google’s preemptive response to Microsoft’s announcement, the precautions Microsoft is taking to prevent another “Tay” moment, and both the capabilities and limitations of this new generation of AI.
The new Bing, along with an updated version of Microsoft’s Edge browser, are available in a limited preview, with a wait-list for those who want to try the AI search and web copilot as they roll out more broadly.
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