While Google is still a little ways out from the public debut of Bard, Microsoft this week showed off its AI-powered Bing, integrated with ChatGPT. And as it turns out, quite a few folks are interested in giving it a shot, with one million people on the “new Bing” waitlist in just the first couple of days.
Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi confirmed on Twitter that, within the first 48 hours, over one million people joined the waitlist for the “new Bing” preview. That preview allows users to find information on the web with the help of AI, either with a sidebar that can pull information based on queries, or through a full chatbot interface that’s remarkably similar to ChatGPT.
“New Bing” was unveiled on February 8, with Microsoft opening up signups for the new experience immediately. Anyone can technically experience what the “new Bing” is like through a limited demo that works for everyone, but the full experience requires Microsoft to grant access. Further, Microsoft also locks the “conversational search” to its Edge browser, so users are unable to access it through Google Chrome or other browsers.
Is one million really all that big of a number? It’s hard to say. In May 2022, Statista estimates that Bing had around 1.2 billion “unique global visitors.” If so, that means a mere 0.1% of Bing’s user base has signed up so far.
But still, one million people in less than two days is quite the way to kick things off.
More on Search:
- Bing with ChatGPT is Microsoft’s latest way to get you to switch from Google Chrome to Edge
- Microsoft announces ‘new Bing’ as ‘AI-powered answer engine’
- Comment: As Bard and Bing usher in AI-powered search, Google needs to punish SEO spam
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Author: Ben Schoon
Source: 9TO5Google
