Microsoft’s AI-powered Bing search and Edge browser is making waves all over the world with its ease of use and comprehensive responses. The US-based tech giant unveiled its latest offering on February 8 claiming that it will redefine searching for information on the Internet. Now, a week after the launch, Microsoft has posted its observations on the way the search engine and browser have been used so far. The company asserted that the Bing search engine and the Edge browser with an integrated chat have been designed to deliver enhanced search results and ‘more complete’ answers to questions from users and the ability to generate content to spark your creativity. Both the new Bing and Edge browser has been made available for limited preview and Microsoft has been testing them with a select set of people from across 169 countries to gather feedback and improve the product. Here’s a look at the observations cited by Microsoft. Increased Engagement The company in its blog post said that with offerings such as instantly summarised answers, new chat experience, and content creation tools, it has witnessed a phenomenal increase in engagement across traditional search results. According to Microsoft, feedback on the answers generated by the new Bing was mostly positive with 71 % of users hailing the AI-powered answers. It also noted that the chat feature too witnessed healthy engagement with users posting multiple questions during a session to seek new information. While Microsoft acknowledged the overwhelmingly positive feedback from users, the company also said that it had its share of challenges when it came to answers that needed timely data such as live sports scores. The company said for queries with answers derived from financial reports, it is planning a ‘4X increase’ in the grounding of data sent to the model. It also has plans to add a toggle to give greater control to users on the precision vs creativity of the answer to suit the query. New use cases for chat When it came to chat, the company said that its ease of use has been a success. The company said that an area where it saw a new use-case for chat is how users were using it for social entertainment and general discovery of the world. It was found that when it came to long chat sessions with 15 or more questions, Bing often became repetitive or delivered answers that were not helpful. The company went on to explain this scenario in two ways. Firstly, extended chat sessions can confuse the model on what query it is answering. To counter this Microsoft said that it will be adding a new tool to let users easily refresh the context or start from scratch. In another case, the model, according to the company, often responds in the tone in which it is being asked to respond. Since it is a non-trivial scenario, the company said that it was looking towards offering a more fine-tuned control. Bug fixes Earlier some users had reported technical issues or bugs with the new Bing which lead to slow loading, incorrect formatting, and broken links. The company said that most of these issues have been addressed with the daily releases and more such issues will be addressed with its larger releases each week. New features in the offing Some users requested new features such as on the new Bing such as booking flights or sending emails and the ability to share great searches and answers. Microsoft said that it appreciates the creative ideas and is working towards including these in future releases.
