Microsoft Announces Bing Generative Search to Compete with Google AI Overviews

Microsoft on Wednesday added a new artificial intelligence (AI) feature to its Bing search engine. The feature, called Bing Generative Search, shows a snapshot of the information for the searched query. The feature is similar to Google’s AI Overviews, which was made public in the U.S. in May. Bing’s AI-powered search also shows the sources from which the content came. The company said the feature is currently enabled for a small percentage of queries, likely to prevent incidents of AI hallucinations that plagued AI Overviews.

Bing Generative Search Features

In a blog afterMicrosoft Bing announced the feature, saying, “Today we’re excited to share a first look at our new generative search experience, currently delivering to a small percentage of user queries.” The feature is an extension of the company’s AI-powered chat responses on Bing, which launched in February 2023.

Bing Generative Search
Photo Credit: Microsoft Bing

The new feature is built using the company’s large and small language models (SLMs and LLMs), but the company didn’t reveal which AI models were used to make it happen. Microsoft explained how it works, noting that the AI ​​can contextually understand the search query and then process millions of sources of information to match the right content. It then uses the data to generate relevant search results.

Visually, Bing Generative Search looks a lot like Google’s AI Overviews. It appears in a gray box at the top of the Bing search results page. The snapshot of information comes with a heading, a document index for easy navigation to the right section, and source citations. The AI ​​also adds images, videos, and tables when needed.

When Bing’s generative search appears, traditional search results are moved to the right side of the page. The left side shows the snapshot first, followed by the source links, and then related search results.

The company says it’s optimizing accuracy and has refined its approach to focus on that. However, like the details surrounding the AI ​​model, the architecture used to do so wasn’t disclosed. Microsoft also stressed that it’s closely monitoring how the feature affects traffic to publishers.