Technologies

Remember Bing? With ChatGPT’s Help, Microsoft Is Coming for Google Search

The future of search is conversational, if ChatGPT’s viral success is anything to go by.

Have you ever found yourself trawling through endless pages of results on a search engine to find the answer to a complex question? Say you want to find out if a vegetarian diet is suitable for your dog. Your research journey might begin by hopping onto Google and typing «is a veg diet good for dogs» into the search box and then having to make sense of the legion of generated links. By the time you find an answer, you’ve sunk way more time than you’d budgeted into poring through articles, reports and their sources.

In the not-so-distant future, finding the answer to a complex question might not be such a tedious process. Microsoft is reportedly integrating a more advanced version (GPT-4) of the AI tech that underlies the headline-grabbing ChatGPT into its Bing search engine in a move that could transform search as we know it. More specifically, Bing might have the potential to serve up a search experience that’s superior to Google, according to AI researchers, and potentially usurp the search giant’s decades-long dominance.

«ChatGPT is the first new technology in more than a decade that may really transform search and that could, at least in principle, upend Google’s market dominance,» said Anton Korinek, an AI researcher and professor of economics, at the University of Virginia. «What the technology does is that it allows consumers to interact with their computer in a much more natural and conversational form than traditional search.»

At this point, we don’t know what Bing’s AI-driven search results might look like exactly (although some people have seen the new version of Bing appear briefly before vanishing). Microsoft declined to comment for this story. However, AI researchers expect a meaningful departure from the status quo in terms of how a search engine presents an answer and how users interact with it. After all, ChatGPT is not designed to browse the internet for information (like a search engine). Instead, the chatbot uses information studied from vast swaths of training data to generate a response.

«ChatGPT can answer its users with a single clear response compared to the myriads of links of traditional search engines. It also has capabilities that are far beyond traditional search engines, like [the ability] to generate new text, explain concepts, have a back-and-forth conversation between the user and the system, and so on,» said Korinek. «People still find emergent capabilities that even the creators of ChatGPT were not aware that the system had.»

Microsoft announced plans in January to invest more resources into OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, to the tune of $10 billion. The deal would help keep both companies at the cutting edge of what’s known as generative AI, a tech used in ChatGPT that can learn from copious amounts of data to create virtually any content format (text, images, music and so on) simply from a text prompt.

Search is just one in a suite of consumer-facing products in Microsoft’s stable that could potentially change meaningfully for customers in the coming years. According to a report by The Information, the Seattle-based tech giant also has plans to integrate ChatGPT’s AI tech into long-established products like Word, PowerPoint and Outlook in an endeavor that could change how more than a billion people work and accomplish daily tasks. For instance, integrating it into Outlook could mean simply prompting the email application to write a message about a specific topic.

«Microsoft will deploy OpenAI’s models across our consumer and enterprise products and introduce new categories of digital experiences built on OpenAI’s technology,» the company said in a press release announcing the expanded partnership.

Conversational search

For its part, Google and its cutting-edge subunit DeepMind have been working on similar systems for years. In fact, Google pioneered the AI technology known as a transformer that’s used in ChatGPT, GPT-3 and GPT-2. The search giant chose not to release them to the public, though, in part over concerns about unethical behavior and how chat systems sometimes break social norms.

However, in the wake of ChatGPT’s viral success, Google says it’s gearing up to release its challenger to ChatGPT imminently.

«In the coming weeks and months, we’ll make these language models available, starting with LaMDA, so that people can engage directly with them,» CEO Sundar Pichai said on a call detailing Alphabet’s fourth-quarter financial results in early February.

Google will focus on responsible AI, Pichai said, an important point given the problems with bias and wrong answers the technology can produce, among others. For instance, in 2016 Microsoft created a chatbot called Tay that it was forced to take offline after it spewed out hate speech. Even ChatGPT, which has rules to create positive and friendly content, can be manipulated into producing upsetting responses using the right prompts.

Google has also recently invested $300 million dollars into ChatGPT rival Anthropic, according to a Financial Times report.

«A competing system that is currently conducting beta tests is Anthropic’s Claude, which (or perhaps I should say who) has a very different personality from ChatGPT and is really a pleasure to interact with —it is so refined, cultured and polite,» said Korinek.

It’s no secret that Google search has become more conversational in general over the years. The company has made progress in this area with the Google assistant and with knowledge panels in search, and for years has pitched conversation as the future of search, demoing its AI systems LaMDA and MUM at its 2021 I/O developer conference.

Leveraging OpenAI’s artificial intelligence seems to be how Microsoft is attempting to edge out Google at its own game. In the wake of ChatGPT’s release, Google management issued a «code red,» according to The New York Times. The report said internal teams had been reassigned to kickstart work on AI between now and an expected company conference in May.

Still, Google’s search engine today remains the undisputed market leader as it has for decades, commanding 84% of global search market share, compared to Bing’s 9% (although it has grown in recent years) in 2022, according to Statista.

Google declined to comment for this story.

How smart is ChatGPT?

As you’ve probably heard by now, ChatGPT is a sophisticated chatbot that went viral globally after its consumer release in late November as a free online tool accessible to anyone with an internet connection. The AI-powered chatbot made headlines thanks in part to its ability to churn out delightful poetry, generate meal plans and provide authoritative answers to complex questions within seconds after being prompted. The tech underlying it isn’t exactly brand new, but no chatbot had yet managed to capture mainstream fascination in the way that ChatGPT did. That’s largely because OpenAI built a snazzy user experience around the GPT-3.5 language model, and that’s the phenomenon we know as ChatGPT.

GPT-3.5 is an improved version of GPT-3, which debuted in 2020 and which learned from vast tracts of data and code to help it achieve its abilities. According to researchers at Stanford University, GPT-3 was trained on 570 gigabytes of text and has 175 billion parameters. (Google’s Dale Markowitz, meanwhile, put it at 45 terabytes of text data, «including almost all of the public web.») For comparison, its predecessor, GPT-2, was over 100 times smaller, at 1.5 billion parameters.

«This increase in scale drastically changes the behavior of the model — GPT-3 is able to perform tasks it was not explicitly trained on, like translating sentences from English to French, with few to no training examples. This behavior was mostly absent in GPT-2,» researchers from Stanford‘s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence wrote in a 2021 post.

«The current version of ChatGPT probably already knows more about the world than any individual human, and it can present that knowledge in digestible form,» said Korinek.

For all the promise ChatGPT holds, there are nearly as many limitations. Critics of ChatGPT say it’s not always clear where the chatbot is pulling information from, which can make it difficult for people to trust the results. Skeptics also point out that ChatGPT will always remain undermined by the imperfect nature of the data it was trained on, including biased information or misinformation.

OpenAI has acknowledged the chatbot’s weaknesses in its current form. CEO Sam Altman said in a December post on Twitter that the product struggles with «robustness and truthfulness» and that it would be «a mistake to be relying on it for anything important right now.»

But don’t look for the AI bandwagon to slow down.

«There will be a number of new systems like ChatGPT that will enter the market in 2023, and the main implication of the resulting competition is that consumers will have more choice and, hopefully, better products for consumers,» added Korinek.

GPT-4, which is under development, is reported to have 100 trillion parameters. But a release is not expected to take place until OpenAI is «confident we can [release] it safely and responsibly,» Altman said in an interview with StrictlyVC in early January.

Altman also attempted to manage expectations of that fourth iteration of GPT, the sophisticated language model that underpins ChatGPT, saying «we don’t have AGI.» AGI stands for artificial general intelligence, or a technology with its own emergent intelligence as opposed to relying on the deep learning models currently used by OpenAI. It’s the kind of intelligence that has been dramatized in science fiction stories for more than a century and was popularized in recent years by the award-winning dystopian show Westworld.

«I think [AGI] is sort of what is expected of us,» Altman said in the same interview, adding that GPT-4 is «going to disappoint» people who hold out that hope.

Editors’ note: CNET is using an AI engine to create some personal finance explainers that are edited and fact-checked by our editors. For more, see this post.

Technologies

It’s the End of the Road for Microsoft Store Movies and TV Shows. What It Means for You

Microsoft has abruptly stopped offering rentals and sales of TV shows and movies on its media platforms.

Microsoft is exiting the market for selling and renting TV and movies across its platforms. There was no reason given for the abrupt change, with Microsoft simply posting the news on a support page on its Xbox website.

«Microsoft has stopped selling new movie and TV content. Existing customers can continue to access their previously purchased content on Windows and Xbox devices,» Microsoft said in the post.

The company said playback and download options will continue to be available for shows and movies people bought previously, but it’s the end of the road for new sales.

On the same page, Microsoft directed users to sign up for Movies Anywhere if they aren’t already members, which makes purchased content available across platforms, and to shop at other media stores including Amazon’s Prime Video, Apple TV and Fandango at Home.

A representative for Microsoft didn’t offer additional comment, but pointed CNET to a similar support blog post on Microsoft’s website.

Microsoft has partnered with many companies over the years to distribute video content since the early 2000s. The move comes as the company has been experiencing mass layoffs and cost cutting across many divisions, including its gaming studios, resulting in the cancellation of multiple upcoming Xbox games.

What happens to content I’ve bought from Microsoft?

Although Microsoft says previously purchased content isn’t going to be unavailable, there are some things to be aware of. According to the support page, you can’t transfer your purchases to another service (although they can be accessed on other services if Movies Anywhere makes them available, but that doesn’t apply to TV shows).

Microsoft isn’t offering refunds for any purchased content, either.

Microsoft says that downloads of movies and TV shows will still work and will be available, «on Windows and in HD max resolution.» Movies and TV shows will still be playable on the Microsoft Movies & TV app.

The company says anyone who is having trouble accessing their purchases can reach out to Microsoft Support.

Technologies

Microsoft Will Erase Your Passwords in 2 Weeks: What to Do Now

If the Authenticator app is your go-to password manager, you’ll need to pick a new one soon.

Microsoft is axing passwords starting in August — and if you use its Authenticator app, you’ll want to be prepared.

For years, Microsoft Authenticator has been a go-to for managing multifactor authentication and saved passwords. However, starting next month, it will no longer support passwords and will move to passkeys instead. That means your logins will soon rely more on things like PINs, fingerprint scans or facial recognition.

Using a passkey can make your account safer, and it’s a move I’m excited about. I recently uncovered that 49% of US adults have risky password habits that can open the door to scammers getting access to your sensitive data.

If you’re a fan of Authenticator and not sure where to start before the switch, here are other password managers CNET recommends and steps you should take before August.

When will Microsoft Authenticator stop supporting passwords?

Microsoft Authenticator houses your passwords and lets you sign into all your Microsoft accounts using a PIN, facial recognition like Windows Hello, or other biometric data like a fingerprint. Authenticator can be used in other ways, such as verifying you’re logging in if you forgot your password, or using two-factor authentication as an extra layer of security for your accounts. In June, the company stopped letting users add passwords to Authenticator.

Starting this month, you won’t be able to use the autofill password function. And next month, you’ll no longer be able to use saved passwords.

If you still want to use passwords instead of passkeys, you can store them in Microsoft Edge. However, CNET experts recommend adopting passkeys during this transition. «Passkeys use public key cryptography to authenticate users, rather than relying on users themselves creating their own (often weak or reused) passwords to access their online accounts,» Tomaschek said.

Why are passkeys a better alternative to passwords?

So what exactly is a passkey? It’s a credential created by the Fast Identity Online Alliance that uses biometric data or a PIN to verify your identity and access your account. Think about using your fingerprint or Face ID to log into your account. That’s generally safer than using a password that is easy to guess or susceptible to a phishing attack.

«Passwords can be cracked, whereas passkeys need both the public and the locally stored private key to authenticate users, which can help mitigate risks like falling victim to phishing and brute-force or credential-stuffing attacks,» said Attila Tomaschek, CNET’s software senior writer and digital security expert.

Passkeys aren’t stored on servers like passwords. Instead, they’re stored only on your personal device. More conveniently, this takes the guesswork out of remembering your passwords and the need for a password manager.

How to set up a passkey in Microsoft Authenticator

Microsoft said in a May 1 blog post that it will automatically detect the best passkey to set up and make that your default sign-in option. «If you have a password and ‘one-time code’ set up on your account, we’ll prompt you to sign in with your one-time code instead of your password. After you’re signed in, you’ll be prompted to enroll a passkey. Then the next time you sign in, you’ll be prompted to sign in with your passkey,» according to the blog post.

To set up a new passkey, open your Authenticator app on your phone. Tap on your account and select «Set up a passkey.» You’ll be prompted to log in with your existing credentials. After you’re logged in, you can set up the passkey.

Other password manager alternatives

Since Microsoft will get rid of all of your passwords in two weeks, you’ll need a new place to store your passwords safely. Tomaschek has a few of the best password manager recommendations after testing and reviewing several.

The top recommendation is Bitwarden for its transparency. It’s open-source and audited annually. From a price perspective, the free plan lets you store infinite passwords across unlimited devices. The free plan also includes features most password managers would charge for, including password sharing and a username and password generator.

Bitwarden’s upgraded plans have other upgraded features that could be worth the cost, too.

Personally, Tomaschek has been using 1Password for a while, and he likes the interface and family plan. Even though it’s second on the list, Tomaschek says it’s just as good as Bitwarden.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for July 19, #769

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for July 19, #769.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle leans heavy on short words, but that didn’t make it any easier. Possibly harder, since a long phrase is easier to match up, at least for me. But as a Gen Xer, I loved the purple category. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group, to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Thirsty?

Green group hint: Think Tom Brady or Patrick Mahomes.

Blue group hint: Ouch!

Purple group hint: Heroes in a half shell!