Bing is the latest search engine to introduce generative AI into its results, with Microsoft announcing that it’s making Bing generative search available to a small percentage of users.
The goal is to give those users the answers they want right in their search results, potentially synthesizing information that they’d otherwise have to click through a bunch of different websites to find. For example, Microsoft says that if you type “what is a spaghetti western?” you’ll get an AI-generated summary of the genre’s history and some examples of spaghetti western films.
You probably remember that Google announced its own generative AI answers back in May. At first, critics were focused on the danger this posed to the web — if you never need to click through your search results, it could be devastating for any business that makes money from online advertising.
Of course, what people actually talked about once the Google launched its AI Overviews was less the long-term implications, and more the fact that some of the answers were laughably bad, advising users to glue cheese to their pizza and eat one rock per day.
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