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Posts tagged "Bing"

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Windows 11’s ‘February 2024 Moment’ update is bringing new AI and accessibility features – plus no more Bing blackmail (for some people)
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The next major update for Windows 11 is expected to arrive at end of February, and what awaits users includes artificial intelligence (AI) tools for organising your desktop, being able to disable Bing in Windows Search (if you’re in the EU), the ability to uninstall Microsoft Edge (again, EU only), Notepad updates, and more. 

This Windows 11 update has been dubbed “Moment 5” and “February 2024 Moment” (the latter being the name that Microsoft uses internally).

While this update will deliver some new features and tweaks, this update is primarily aimed at making Windows 11 compliant with new legislation from the European Union, the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Mozilla recently published a report accusing Microsoft of using “dark patterns” and bad market competition practices with regard to browser choice, so at least in the EU, this situation will slightly improve. 

What Windows 11 users can look forward to and when

Some of the updates that are coming with Moment 5 update include improvements to Windows 365’s Cloud PC integration, built-in accessibility features in Windows 11, an option to remove news from the Widgets Board, and the capability to remove Bing from the Windows Search pane (if you're in the EU). These features are expected to be previewed in late February 2024 or the beginning of March 2024. 

This is all we know about Moment 5 at the moment, according to Windows Central, and we will continue to watch and report new information about the upcoming update as we have it. Going by the internal name given to the update, “February 2024 Moment,” it’s not expected to stretch into March, and Windows Central  suggests that users will be able to install this update as of February 27, 2024. 

You can try out this update out for yourself (if it’s available on the forecasted date) by doing the following: 

1. Go to your PC’s Settings app. 

2. In the left-hand menu, select Windows Update. 

3. In the resulting menu, click on the Check for updates button. 

This will prompt Windows to search for any freshly released available updates. If it finds them, it’ll automatically download and install them on your device. 

Windows 11 Update showing on laptop in an office

(Image credit: TechRadar)

EU-phoria for certain Windows 11 users

This update is good news for users in the EU, with them now being able to disable Bing in Windows Search and choose a different search provider in its place, and uninstall preinstalled apps like Microsoft Edge. It’s certainly a win for Windows 11 users in the EU and a cause for envy from the rest of us – they’re getting more choice and they’re gaining more control over their computers.

It’s not just Microsoft that’s being accused of anti-competitive practices. Mozilla and Google also recently called out Apple for not going far enough with its new rules and regulations that have come about as a result of the DMA, and, somewhat similarly to Microsoft, in engaging in poor browser market competition practices. 

Users have been complaining about Microsoft’s persistent and annoying efforts to try and get them to switch to its browser Edge, and at least for EU users, this will now hopefully end – or at least become less aggressive. The rest of us, however, will have to wait and hope for our governments to follow. 

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Microsoft is getting desperate for more Bing users – but this annoying Edge pop-up is definitely not the way to go about it
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It seems Microsoft is up to its old tricks in trying to push people into using its products, once again, and this time the play is to persuade Edge users to switch their search engine to Bing.

As Windows Central spotted, developer Brad Sams (of Stardock fame) brought our attention to Microsoft’s latest bout of “anti-user behavior” in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

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Sams uses the Edge browser, but was prompted to switch to Bing as the default search engine rather than Google, as you can see in the above screenshot.

This is not the first time Microsoft has been promoting Bing in such a manner, alongside driving other services including Edge itself and OneDrive. (Search for a new browser in Edge, for example, and you’ll get a banner telling you there’s no need to download a different web browser, and the various reasons why).

The Bing search engine continues to struggle for market share against the might of Google, with Microsoft’s creation securing only 3.2% of the market as of November 2023, according to Statcounter.

Analysis: Bing headway – or lack of it

Microsoft hoped that Bing Chat, its AI now-renamed Copilot, would help to swell the ranks of Bing search users when it was launched early this year – but as we can see, that hasn’t happened. The Bing search engine had a 3% share at the beginning of 2023 going by Statcounter’s figures, so has notched that up 0.2% over the course of the year – a pretty miniscule uptick.

It’s safe to say, then, that the AI angle has not panned out for Bing search, although Microsoft has now started thinking about what its various products can do for Copilot, rather than what the chatbot can do for those products. (Witness the debut of Copilot in Windows 10, driving user numbers of the AI forward, rather than keeping Copilot as a carrot to drive migration to Windows 11).

At any rate, whatever piece of Microsoft’s vast jigsaw of products and services we’re talking about, we don’t want to see prompts in Edge, or Windows 11, or anywhere else, trying to twist the arms of users to switch to another Microsoft creation.

And fair enough, Google does this kind of thing too, pushing Chrome and its own search – but not as often as Microsoft in our experience. Can we please lay off the various prompts for 2024, Microsoft? Because if anything, throughout 2023 they seem to have become more prevalent again.

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Watch out, Google – Bing search now uses AI to hone its results
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Bing, Microsoft's search engine, has been powered up using AI.

Windows Central noticed that Microsoft penned a blog post about the generative AI captions which have been introduced to Bing search.

Normally, when you search for something on Bing, Microsoft’s engine returns results accompanied by a small snippet of text pulled from the page based on relevant key words.

Generative AI captions are different in that they offer a more context-based summary tailored to your search query.

Microsoft explains: “By analyzing a search query, [generative AI] extracts the most pertinent insights from web pages, and skillfully transforms them into highly relevant and easily digestible snippets.”

Every search query will prompt Bing to return a different snippet with the result, so even searching on the same topic, but with changed wording for the query, will mean generative AI (if it’s involved, of course) returning a different summary.

Analysis: A revolution in web search?

For those wary of having their website dealt with in this way, Microsoft further notes that while the generative AI-powered captions “may not mirror the exact wording on the webpage,” Bing employs a whole load of signals to ensure a precise and high-quality summary.

Those who remain unconvinced can opt their website out of generative AI captions if they wish.

Microsoft believes this initiative will “revolutionize the way people explore the web,” so the company is talking a pretty big game on this one.

It’s still early stages for the feature, of course, and a lot will depend on whether that promise of high-quality summaries is consistently realized.

Google isn’t standing still in this area, mind you, and already instigated its own program bringing generative AI to search, highlighting the key points of a web page in a similar vein (and more besides). This has been in testing throughout this year (since May), with it being rolled out much more broadly earlier this month.

AI is pretty much creeping into every area of computing, of course, and web searches will doubtless prove to be a rich avenue to explore.

Thus far, the addition of the Bing chatbot hasn’t helped drive traffic to Bing search, as Microsoft hoped – but perhaps generative AI will have more success in this respect. It’s a hugely uphill struggle against the might of Google, though, which has effectively become a verb meaning to search the web.

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Want to get rid of Bing, Edge and ads in Windows 11? Some users will be able to – but not everyone
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Microsoft is giving users more control over what’s installed with Windows 11, and how its own services are embedded in the OS – but the catch is this is just happening in Europe (specifically the European Economic Area or EEA).

Windows Central stumbled across a blog post from Microsoft describing the changes being made, and noting that many of these are to comply with the Digital Markets Act in the EEA.

The new approach means Windows 11 users in the EEA can uninstall more default apps including Microsoft’s Edge browser.

Furthermore, it’s possible to banish Bing results from the Windows search box in the taskbar. These are the web search results that pop up, whatever you’re looking for, and then fire up Bing in Edge if clicked.

On top of that, with the Widgets panel, Microsoft is allowing for the news and adverts feed to be switched off, so the board will purely play host to widgets (imagine that – and you’ll have to imagine it, sadly, outside of the EEA).

European users will also be asked if they want to sync up their Microsoft account with Windows 11 (rather than it just happening by default).

And finally, in the EEA if you click a browser link, it will open in your default browser – meaning that Microsoft’s own software will no longer insist on firing up Edge regardless of your preference (which makes sense, as if you’ve uninstalled Edge, that could get tricky).

When will all this happen? The changes are rolling out in preview now for Windows 11, and will follow for Windows 10 too, with the aim being to achieve compliance with the European regulations and deploy to consumers by March 6, 2024.

Windows 11 Update showing on laptop in an office

(Image credit: TechRadar)

Analysis: Choices for everyone? Not likely

Clearly these are customization options which many Windows 11 users would love to benefit from. Especially the ability to have the widgets board with no distractions, just pure widgets, as well as having links open in your default browser always, without fail, and unhooking Bing from the taskbar search box.

Let’s face it, in the latter case, when you’re quickly searching for a Windows setting, you don’t want to be spammed with meaningless web search suggestions that try to get you to open up Edge (and Bing.com).

Will these choices – and other perks like the ability to remove the Edge browser – come to other regions outside of the EEA? Well, that seems very unlikely, seeing as Microsoft is having its hand forced here, and it’s about complying with regulations (that aren’t in place elsewhere) rather than genuinely catering to the wants and needs of users. So, a wider expansion of these options seems a forlorn hope, sadly.

Remember that Copilot is not available in the EEA yet, and this is due to regulatory issues – so these moves could well be tied up in Microsoft’s overall scheme of things for deploying the AI to Windows 11 users in this region.

As Microsoft puts it: “We look forward to continuing to work with the European Commission to finalize our compliance obligations.” And we take that to mean Copilot shouldn’t be too far off for the EEA, with any luck for those who live there.

The one positive for the rest of the world is that at least the streamlining of the default app roster in Windows 11 is happening for everyone. This is something Microsoft has been working on for some time, giving users the ability to remove the likes of the Photos and Camera apps, and the Tips app plus Steps Recorder are to be axed, plus the Maps and Movies & TV clients have been dropped. Thankfully those streamlining efforts count for everyone, and should be an ongoing drive, we reckon.

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Bing AI may be getting crushed in the battle against Google search – but Microsoft might not care
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Microsoft doubtless hoped that the launch of Bing AI would help attract users to the Bing search site, but that hasn’t happened going by some fresh stats.

Statcounter has just aired some figures on search volume and the bad news (for Microsoft) is that Bing’s share of the search engine market in the US has dropped by half a percentage point.

Bing was on 7.4% this time last year, but is now on 6.9%, whereas Google has notched up from 86.7% in 2022 to 88% now.

Okay, so it’s not a big drop for Bing, but nonetheless, it shows that – at least according to one source – Microsoft’s AI chatbot hasn’t made any difference to its search traffic.

The better news in these stats (spotted by Windows Central) is that Edge is up 1% in the browser market, but it’s only on 5.5% in total, so Google’s Chrome remains just as dominant as its search engine.

Analysis: A reversal of priorities?

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about Bing AI not helping Microsoft’s search traffic efforts. A few months ago, Statcounter’s global stats also showed that Bing.com traffic fell slightly (to be fair, by 0.04% which is margin of error stuff, so effectively it stayed the same). The global stats for October 2023 also show a slight drop year-on-year.

The broad conclusion, then, is that Bing AI is not managing to drive any meaningful level of traffic to Microsoft’s search engine.

Does Microsoft really care overly about that, though? Maybe not so much now we’d suggest.

While the initial aim with Bing AI (or a big part of it) was to boost the attractiveness of Bing.com, since the launch of the chatbot, the AI explosion has been so pronounced – and the bandwagon so attention-grabbing – that artificial intelligence has become overrulingly important itself.

By which we mean that Bing search considerations, or persuading folks to adopt Windows 11 to get the Copilot AI (essentially integrated Bing with bells and whistles, though not many of the latter yet), have now taken a back seat.

If a fresh rumor is to be believed, Microsoft is bringing Copilot to Windows 10 – a surprising move after the software giant said that the older OS was no longer getting any new features (except for very minor tweaks – and the AI assistant most definitely is a major upgrade).

What this shows – if true – is that Microsoft is less worried about encouraging Windows 11 adoption (which has been seriously slow) and using Copilot as a carrot to persuade upgrades, and more concerned about getting all the many folks on Windows 10 using its AI, bolstering the figures for that.

We can believe this might be the case, given that in the bigger picture, AI has become such a huge deal – with everyone getting in on the act, and for example the likes of Nvidia making a ton of profit from its AI-targeted GPUs. Team Green is very keenly focused on those products now, to the extent that we even worry about the future of the best gaming GPUs (the GeForce ones, that is).

It’s likely the end goal is shifting to Microsoft advancing its AI tech across web properties and its desktop OS ecosystem alike, getting people used to Bing or Copilot being their everyday helper – and that being the primary goal.

Rather than leveraging AI to push the company’s other products, Microsoft is now prioritizing the other way round, possibly. Maybe also thinking that if its AI systems gain enough clout, users will follow to other products eventually, anyway.

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Bing AI could soon be much more versatile and powerful thanks to plug-ins
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Microsoft’s Bing AI may be close to finally getting plug-ins, a feature that has been experimented with before, and will make the chatbot considerably more versatile and powerful (in theory, anyway).

Windows Latest reports that the update to add plug-ins has rolled out to a ‘small’ number of Bing Chat users over the weekend, and the tech site was one of those to get access.

Note that it appears the rollout is only happening for those using the Canary version of Microsoft’s Edge browser (and Windows Latest only got the feature in that preview release, not in the finished version of Edge).

We’re told that the AI currently offers five plug-ins to testers and you can pick any three of those to use in a session. If you want to change plug-ins, you’ll need to start a new Bing Chat session.

Windows Latest carried out some testing with a couple of those plug-ins, and the results seemed useful, with the OpenTable add-on providing some restaurant recommendations in a query.

Other plug-ins available in testing include Kayak, Klarna, and a shopping add-on for buying suggestions – we’ve already got you covered there, of course, especially for the imminent Black Friday sale – but it may be the case that different plug-ins appear for different users.

Analysis: Faster and better

Eventually, of course, there will be a whole load of plug-ins for the Bing AI, or that’s certainly Microsoft’s plan, although they’ll doubtless be rolled out in stages over time. One of those will be the much-awaited ‘no search’ function that was switched to be implemented via a plug-in not so long ago. (This allows the user to specify that the AI can’t use search content scraped from the web in its responses).

We’ve seen plug-ins in a limited test rollout before (in August), but they were pulled, so this is effectively a return of the feature – hinting it might arrive sooner rather than later.

Fingers crossed, and the good news is that Windows Latest observes that these new plug-ins seem to be more responsive and work better than the old efforts (performance-related concerns are likely one of the reasons that the test plug-ins got pulled earlier this year).

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Microsoft reins in Bing AI’s Image Creator – and the results don’t make much sense
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You may have noticed that Bing AI got a big upgrade for its image creation tool last week (among other recent improvements), but it appears that after having taken this sizeable step forward, Microsoft has now taken a step back.

In case you missed it, Bing’s image creation system was upgraded to a whole new version – Dall-E 3 – which is much more powerful. So much so that Microsoft noted the supercharged Dall-E 3 was generating a lot of interest and traffic, and so might be sluggish initially.

There’s another issue with Dall-E 3 though, because as Windows Central observed, Microsoft has considerably reined in the tool since its recent revamp.

Now, we were already made aware that the image creation tool would employ a ‘content moderation system’ to stop inappropriate pics being generated, but it seems the censorship imposed is harsher than expected. This might be a reaction to the kind of content Bing AI users have been trying to get the system to create.

As Windows Central points out, there has been a lot of controversy about an image created of Mickey Mouse carrying out the 9/11 attack (unsurprisingly).

The problem, though, is that beyond those kinds of extreme asks, as the article makes clear, some users are finding innocuous image creation requests being denied. Windows Central tried to get the chatbot to make an image of a man breaking a server rack with a sledgehammer, but was told this violated Microsoft’s terms of using Bing AI.

Whereas last week, the article author noted that they could create violent zombie apocalypse scenarios featuring popular characters (that are copyrighted) with Bing AI not raising a complaint.

Analysis: Random censorship

The point is about censorship being an overreaction here, or this seemingly being the case going by reports, we should add. Microsoft left the rules too slack in the initial implementation, it appears, but has gone ahead and tightened things too much now.

What really illustrates this is that Bing AI is even censoring itself, as highlighted by someone on Reddit. Bing Image Creator has a ‘surprise me’ button that generates a random image (the equivalent of Google’s ‘I’m feeling lucky’ button, if you will, that produces a random search). But here’s the kicker – the AI is going ahead, creating an image, and then censoring it immediately.

Well, we suppose that is a surprise, to be fair – and one that would seem to aptly demonstrate that Microsoft’s censorship of the Image Creator has maybe gone too far, limiting its usefulness at least to some extent. As we said at the outset, it’s a case of a step forward, then a quick step back.

Windows Central observes that it was able to replicate this scenario of Bing’s self-censorship, and that it’s not even a rare occurrence – it reportedly happens around a third of the time. It sounds like it’s time for Microsoft to do some more fine-tuning around this area, although in fairness, when new capabilities are rolled out, there are likely to be adjustments applied for some time – so perhaps that work could already be underway.

The danger of Microsoft erring too strongly on the ‘rather safe than sorry’ side of the equation is that this will limit the usefulness of a tool that, after all, is supposed to be about exploring creativity.

We’ve reached out to Microsoft to check what’s going on with Bing AI in this respect, and will update this story if we hear back.

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Bing Chat can now create more realistic images thanks to DALL-E 3 AI upgrade
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Bing Chat has received a substantial update, now integrating OpenAI’s most recent text-to-image model DALL-E 3. Best of all, it’s available to everyone for free.

As it’s laid out in Microsoft's announcement post, DALL-E 3 is a big upgrade to previous generations because it’s able to produce more “realistic and diverse images” thanks to improvements made in three areas. 

The AI is now able to adhere to a text prompt more closely than before when producing content. Microsoft recommends adding as much detail as possible to ensure the final image sticks close to your vision. Due to the extra precision, outputs will be more coherent or “logically consistent”. Sometimes creations from other models like Stable Diffusion look downright weird. Bing's new update improves on this front.

Also, tweaks were made to DALL-E 3 so it can accurately portray unique art styles that meet your standard of creativity, according to the company.

Image 1 of 4

Bing Chat DALL-E 3 generation

(Image credit: Future)
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Bing Chat DALL-E 3 generated hand

(Image credit: Future)
Image 3 of 4

Bing Chat DALL-E werewolf

(Image credit: Future)
Image 4 of 4

Pixel art parrot

(Image credit: Future)

Above are some samples we created ourselves to give you an idea of what the AI can now do. Using the generative engine is really simple. You can head on over to either Bing Chat or the Bing Image Creator website, enter a prompt in the text box, give it a few seconds, and you're done. It's just that easy.

Security upgrade

Besides the performance upgrade, Microsoft has added two security features to Bing Chat aimed at maintaining ethical usage. Every output will come with a Content Credential and an “invisible digital watermark” stating it was generated by Bing Image Creator as well as the date and time it was made.  

Content Credential notice

(Image credit: Future)

The company is also implementing a “content moderation system” to remove images deemed “harmful or inappropriate”. This includes content “that [contains] nudity, violence, hate speech, or illegal activities.” Something not mentioned is you can’t generate pictures featuring famous figures. We asked Bing to create something with President Joe Biden in it. But we were told we couldn’t as it violates the service’s policy. 

Work in progress

As impressive as Bing Chat is now, it is still a work in progress. Like other AI engines, Microsoft’s model still has difficulty drawing hands. It’s not as bad as when you had Stable Diffusion generating gnarled hands back in early 2023. However, you may notice an extra digit or two. In fact, the werewolf image above actually has five fingers on its right hand while it only has four on the left. 

Generated image of hands with an extra finger

(Image credit: Future)

We do want to warn you that you may experience some slowdown in AI image-generation output. We certainly did although Bing Chat picked up speed after a few minutes. In the worst case, the AI will refuse to do anything because it can't process new requests.

If you want to take generative AI on the go, be sure to check out TechRadar’s list of the four best art generator apps for iPhone. 

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Some users will find Microsoft’s Bing AI chatbot is suddenly a lot more helpful
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Microsoft has made a big change to its Bing AI for one of the modes of the chatbot’s operation, namely the ‘Precise’ mode.

As users of the AI will be aware, there are three modes that can be selected for the Bing AI: the mentioned Precise setting, as well as Balanced, and Creative.

Precise mode is for those who want shorter and more factual answers in their dealings with the AI, whereas Creative lets the chatbot more off the leash in terms of replies (and Balanced strikes a compromise between these two ends of the freedom spectrum, as it were).

According to Mikhail Parakhin, head of Advertising and Web Services at Microsoft, the company has finished rolling out a “pretty big update” for the Precise mode.

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As Parakhin explained on X (formerly Twitter), this doesn’t entail introducing new features for Precise mode, just ensuring that the chatbot gives better answers with this setting.

Analysis: Pushing forward for a better Bing bot

Delivering better answers is, of course, one of the most effective ways Microsoft can improve its Bing AI. As Parakhin observes in the above tweet, the polishing of Precise mode has been noted by some users, even if they’ve framed it as ‘Creative is worse, and Precise is better than it now’, rather than it being a positive step forward for Precise. Which it definitely is, we shouldn’t need to add.

There’s another way that Microsoft is working on making Bing AI’s responses better, and that’s a ‘no search’ parameter. This is something that’s been mentioned in the past which will allow users to cut off the chatbot from the web (search functions) when formulating an answer.

In other words, you’ll be getting a direct answer from the AI (as opposed to one informed by search content derived from the web), and that could be useful in certain situations (like queries about coding, for example). It’ll also mean that responses should be swifter, too, without having to scrape the web for extra bits of data.

So what’s happening with the ‘no search’ function? Apparently, it’s going to be implemented as a plug-in, rather than directly into Bing AI, and is still inbound according to Parakhin (and will happen as part of the general plug-in rollout). Hat tip to Neowin for spotting that one.

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Microsoft unveils Turing Bletchley v3: The AI model taking Bing to the next level
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Microsoft is working hard towards proving the 'intelligence' part in artificial intelligence, and has just revealed the latest version of its Turing Bletchley series of machine intelligence models, Turing Bletchley v3.

As explained in an official blog post, Turing Bletchley v3 is a multilingual vision-language foundation model, and will be integrated into many existing Microsoft products. If the name of this model sounds scary, don’t worry – let’s break it down. 

The ‘multilingual' part is self-explanatory – the model helps Microsoft products function better in a range of languages, currently standing at more than ninety. The ‘vision-language' part means that the model has image processing and language capabilities simultaneously, which is why this kind of model is known as ‘multimodal’. Finally, the ‘foundation model’ part refers to the conceptual and technical structure of the actual model. 

The first version of this multimodal model was launched in November 2021, and in 2022, Microsoft started testing the latest version – v3. Turing Bletchley v3 is pretty impressive because making a model that can “understand” one type of input (say, text or images) is already a big undertaking. This model combines both text and image processing to, in the case of Bing, improve search results. 

Incorporating neural networks 

The Turing Bletchley v3 model makes use of the concept of neural networks, which is a way of programming a machine that mimics a human brain. These neural networks allow it to make connections in the following manner, as described by Microsoft itself: 

“Given an image and a caption describing the image, some words in the caption are masked. A neural network is then trained to predict the hidden words conditioned on both the image and the text. The task can also be flipped to mask out pixels instead of words.”

The model is trained over and over in this way, not unlike how we learn. The model is also continuously monitored and improved by Microsoft developers. 

Where else the new model is being used

Bing Search isn’t the only product that’s been revamped with Turing Bletchley v3. It’s also being used for content moderation in Microsoft’s Xbox Live game service. The model helps the Xbox moderation team to identify inappropriate and harmful content uploaded by Xbox users to their profiles. 

Content moderation is a massive job scale-wise and often mentally exhausting, so any assistance that helps moderators actually have to see less upsetting content is a big win in my eyes. I can see Turing Bletchley v3 being deployed in content moderation for Bing Search in a similar manner.

This sounds like a significant improvement for Bing Search. The AI-aided heat is on, especially between Microsoft and Google. Recently, Microsoft brought Bing AI to Google Chrome, and now it’s coming for image search. I don’t see how Google doesn’t see this as direct competition in the most direct manner. Google still enjoys the greatest popularity both in terms of browser and search volume, but nothing is set in stone. Your move, Google. 

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