Microsoft has a better take on AI search than Google

Bing has released a blog post previewing its new AI-powered search experience — basically its version of Google AI Overviews, but better. Instead of Google’s generated blocks of text suggesting that people add nontoxic glue to their pizzas, Bing’s plans include bespoke spreads of information, including links to sources and further reading.

An example from the blog shows the query “how long can elephants live,” and the AI-generated results begin with the following answer in large font: “Up to 70 years in the wild and 88 years in captivity.” There’s also a link to the source beside it, along with further excerpts from the same webpage. It then branches into related sections like “factors that affect lifespan” and “oldest known elephants.” And at the top left, there’s an index outlining all the topics covered.

All of this is laid out on the left side of the webpage while the right is dedicated to the traditional search results. Microsoft notes that early data suggests this approach doesn’t affect the number of clicks to websites and “supports a healthy web ecosystem.”

What’s exciting about this is the possibility of instantly getting the exact answer to your query without even needing to click anything. This experience does exist with Google in some simple situations — if you search “how old is Biden,” for instance, his age appears at the top of the results page, and it’s great. So, imagine if that was the default for any question you asked — instead of having to click an SEO article and scroll down five paragraphs to find your answer, it’d just be right there at the top of the results page.

As well as being useful for quick answers, the links to further reading and related topics could be great for research and learning. Microsoft claims that Bing “understands the search query,” implying it could also help provide users with the results they want even when their query isn’t very specific. This is something large language models can already do — I’ve used ChatGPT to help me find a Jane Austen quote that I could only vaguely remember the theme of — but it would be great to have this ability embedded right into a search engine.

However, with everyone else struggling so much with accuracy, Microsoft must also be facing the same problems. Requiring generated results to include links to sources will certainly help people fact-check what they’re reading, but getting accuracy rates up is essential if the company really wants this feature to be useful.

Right now, the generative search is still in the early stages, and Microsoft says it will just be delivering the feature to a small percentage of user queries to test and gather feedback. We all feel a bit burned after the trainwreck that is Google AI Overviews, but let’s hope this next attempt from Microsoft will do a better job.