The new Windows 11 update brings AI-powered Bing chat right to the taskbar.

Microsoft is adding support for Bing Chat and other “new”Bing features to the Windows taskbar as part of Windows 11’s first major feature update in 2023. Microsoft Product Director Panos Panay announced the updates in a blog post released today.

The Windows Update doesn’t open the new Bing preview to those who haven’t signed up yet, and there is currently a waiting list for new users who want to try the feature. But if and when Microsoft expands the Bing preview to more of its users, the millions of PCs that automatically install today’s update will already have it built-in.

You can read about other changes in the new Windows 11 updates here. Anyone using the Windows 11 2022 updates can manually download them via Windows Update starting today and all new changes will automatically roll out to those PCs in March.

The ups and downs of the new Bing

If you agree with the principle that all press is good press, then Bing has probably had the best month of publicity in its 13-year history.

Bing Chat, based on OpenAI’s underlying ChatGPT technology, has only been available to the public for a few weeks, with results fluctuating between “entertaining”and “concerning.”While the bot can relay an unexpected and useful range of responses to user queries, Bing Chat has also been shown to spread misinformation; revealing secrets about their inner workings and then insisting that they really aren’t; becoming oddly sullen and/or belligerent during long chat sessions; and threaten Ars Technica journalists.

Instead of stopping the public preview — as happened when the Internet broke Tay, the previous hit on the AI ​​chatbot — Microsoft is trying to publicly address Bing Chat’s problems before opening it up to a wider audience. Recent fixes include limiting the bot to five or fewer replies in a single chat instance and stopping talking about themselves and their simulated “feelings”.

Meanwhile, the company is working to integrate the new Bing and other AI features into more of its products. This started with the Microsoft Edge browser earlier this month and then expanded to Skype and now to Windows 11. In the near future, Microsoft is also reportedly planning to add ChatGPT-based features to apps like Word and Outlook to facilitate the creation of documents and e-mail. (imagine a supercharged clippy actually writing that cover letter for you).

Microsoft is likely to continue researching and implementing new AI-based features thanks to a “multi-year, multi-billion dollar investment”in OpenAI, which, in addition to ChatGPT, is also responsible for the DALL-E image generator, Whisper’s speech recognition. system and other projects. The moves have reportedly sparked a “panic”within Google, which sees AI-based chat as a threat to its core search business. Google’s own chatbot, code-named “Bard”, was unveiled earlier this month in an unimpressive stage demo, as well as a delayed ad, in which Bard gave a false answer to the only question put to him.

Image listing from Microsoft