Microsoft Launches New Bing Powered by ChatGPT-4 A.I. – The New York Times

Microsoft released its new version of Bing to a limited number of people on Tuesday. Each user will be able to run a limited number of queries and people can join a wait list for access to the full version of the service. The company plans to expand to millions more people by the end of the month.

Last week, Microsoft released its first A.I. integration into Outlook, its email service, with a tool that helps salespeople write custom emails. In the coming months, Microsoft plans to release features with generative A.I. on average every week, said Charles Lamanna, an executive who oversees the applications Microsoft builds for businesses.

He compared this new wave of A.I. technologies to the rise of the internet or personal computing. “Everybody is in a room with the lights out trying to feel what the heck this market and this opportunity actually looks like,” he said in an interview last week.

But it is unclear how much of an appetite businesses will have for these services because technologies like ChatGPT are far more expensive to operate than traditional software.

“The economics of software probably will have to change,” Mr. Lamanna said. “Software may be a little bit more expensive, but it will do some pretty amazing stuff.”

The new chatbots do come with baggage. They often do not distinguish between fact and fiction. They can generate language that is biased against women and people of color. And experts worry that people will use them to spread lies at a speed they could not in the past.

“Companies often put these technologies out too quickly, disregarding their flaws and then trying to fix them on the fly,” said Chirag Shah, a University of Washington professor who explores the flaws in chatbots. “This can cause real harm.”

Google and Meta had been reluctant to widely deploy generative A.I. because its flaws could damage their reputations. But OpenAI — a new company with no real brand to protect — was willing to push the envelope.