Microsoft hasn’t officially killed the waitlist, but it should go away in short order. On Tuesday, Microsoft bolsteredOpenAI’s launch of the GPT-4 modelby confirming that it was the model behind Bing Chat. Microsoft is also set to host an AI-focused event on Thursday, where we expect to hear about AI integrations in Microsoft’s Office apps like Word and PowerPoint. It’s possible Microsoft could remove the waitlist during the presentation.
In the initial days of Microsoft’s Bing Chat announcement, more than 1 million people signed up for the waitlist. Microsoft has said millions more have joined since. It only took us a few days to get access through the public waitlist, though our initial time withBing Chat didn’t go as expected. Since the launch, Microsoft has vastly restricted Bing Chat’s responses due to some unhinged conversations. It has slowly gained more freedom, and users can now ask up to 15 questions in a single session and up to 150 in a day.
The explosion in popularity ofChatGPThas put a lot of focus on Microsoft, which partnered with OpenAI in 2019 andinvested $10 billion in the research groupearlier this year. Google hasn’t been sitting by, announcing itsBard AI chatbotin February. The search giant also released AI-powered tools for itssuite of online apps on Tuesday, likely getting ahead of Microsoft’s announcements set for later in the week.
On top of Microsoft’s upcoming AI event, the company also released theEdge Copilot featureearlier in the week. This brings Bing Chat into a sidebar in Microsoft Edge, and it’s available to anyone who has access to Bing Chat (which, at this point, should be anyone). In addition to chat features, Edge Copilot includes aComposetab that can generate text for emails, blog posts, and more, as well as anInsightstab that provides context for the website you’re on.
Microsoft has been building toward Bing Chat availability elsewhere, too. Since launch, Microsoft has rolled out thechatbot on mobile,for example, as well as added chatbot functionality to Skype.
