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

Nintendo Switch 2: Everything We Know About the Console, New Games, Release Date

The $450 console will get Mario Kart World at launch, 4K gaming when docked, Switch 2 Edition game enhancements and new mouse controls.

The Nintendo Switch 2 console’s biggest reveal yet arrived Wednesday morning as part of the company’s Nintendo Direct event. This teed up a day of Switch 2 reveals that include its June 5 release date, a $450 price, its specs, and its initial game lineup that extends from launch into 2026.

The console will be further buoyed by having Mario Kart World as a launch title, which will go on sale in either a $500 bundle with the Switch 2 or on its own for $80 — making the open-world racing game one of Nintendo’s most expensive yet. Other games announced, such as Donkey Kong Bananza, are being priced around $70, which matches the cost of 2023’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. That Zelda game and Breath of the Wild are among the original Switch titles that will get enhanced Nintendo Switch 2 Edition upgrades, a premium upgrade allowing players to get new features, modes and graphical enhancements that take advantage of the newer system’s capabilities.

Here are the top highlights from Nintendo’s console event, all of the games we’ve heard about so far (including new titles, Nintendo Switch 2 Edition titles and GameCube games coming to Nintendo Switch Online) and all of our coverage so far. You can also check out our Nintendo Switch 2 live blog for even more updates about the Switch 2 as we learn them.

Nintendo Switch 2 console

The Nintendo Switch 2’s specs saw a noticeable technical bump over the Switch. The Nintendo Switch 2 has a 7.9-inch, 1080p resolution LCD that supports a 120Hz refresh rate — matching what we now see on most Android phones. When the Switch 2 is docked, compatible games can run in 4K resolution. The new dock also includes a cooling fan.

The Switch 2 comes with 256GB of internal storage, and the new Switch 2 Game Cards will load games faster. For digital libraries, however, the Switch 2 will only work with microSD Express cards, which are different from the microSD cards that are compatible with the prior Nintendo Switch. Nintendo will have a Software Transfer feature available to help move games and data from the original Switch to the Switch 2.

The new Joy-Con for the controllers will support mouse controls, and a new C button will be part of a new GameChat communication feature that allows both voice and video chat. There’s also a Nintendo Switch 2 Camera, allowing players to see each other.

The Switch 2 also adds a second USB-C port to the top of the system, which Nintendo says can help connect its new camera accessory or charge the console when playing in tabletop mode. Nintendo also revealed a new Switch 2 Pro Controller with the C button and customizable GL and GR buttons on the back.

Following the presentation, Nintendo unveiled the system’s price of $450 in the US. It will also sell the Switch 2 bundled with a digital version of Mario Kart World for $500.

Mario Kart World

Mario Kart World removes its traditional boundaries and lets drivers roam freely across an entire world of race courses. The game will get its own Nintendo Direct later this month, where we’ll see additional details, but we already know it’ll include traditional races and a Free Roam mode, much like in the Forza Horizon series.

Getting the game bundled for an extra $50 on the cost of the Switch 2 might be the move if you are interested in the game, because Nintendo announced on its website that standalone copies of Mario Kart World will cost $80.

Joy-Con 2 C button and GameChat

Nintendo’s rolling out its new C button across several new Switch 2 controllers. The button will be used for the new GameChat communication features without a headset. The button will be used alongside a microphone on the console itself, which Nintendo says can be used whether it’s docked to a TV or in handheld mode.

In its teaser video, Nintendo promises the microphone will be able to cancel out loud background noises. GameChat will also work with a Nintendo Switch 2 Camera, allowing video chat and various camera-based game modes in supported titles. GameChat will be free at launch through March 31, 2026.

Nintendo Switch 2 Edition games upgrade titles

The Nintendo Switch 2 will play three types of games: original Switch games, Switch 2 games and Switch 2 Edition games that will receive substantial enhancements. For many of these Switch 2 Edition games, you’ll need to buy an upgrade pack if you own the original for Switch. Many of them will get more than just enhanced graphics in the upgrade; for example, Super Mario Party Jamboree will get new games that support the new Joy-Cons’ mouse controls, audio recognition and video camera gameplay options through the Switch 2 Camera.

Other Nintendo Switch games that are getting Switch 2 Edition options include The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Metroid Prime 4 Beyond and Pokemon Legends: Z-A. Enhancements vary: The Zelda games will start working with a companion phone app for maps and sending schematics to friends, while Kirby will get a new story that’s exclusive to the Switch 2 Edition. On the third-party side, Civilization 7 will get mouse controls.

Nintendo did not announce what upgrade packs will cost. However, some Switch games will get free updates that will improve performance or enhance features when playing them on the Switch 2. The Switch games getting these updates include:

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is a new game set in the world of Zelda that tells the story that leads into The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. This appears to be similar to how Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity told the story of a war that led to the events of Breath of the Wild. The teaser shows Zelda discovering that she’s arrived in the past of Hyrule, and the game will expand on how she gets involved in the corresponding Imprisonment War.

Nintendo Switch 2 games

Several other first- and third-party games were spotlighted during the Switch 2 Direct. These include Donkey Bananza, one of the first 3D platforming games featuring DK since 1999’s Donkey Kong 64. Kirby will also return to the racing genre in Kirby Air Riders, which comes more than 20 years after the GameCube racer Kirby’s Air Ride. DragXDrive will use mouse controls to control a futuristic wheelchair basketball game in which players will simulate push and pull motions to control their character.

An onslaught of Switch 2 third-party games were quickly shuffled through during the Direct, which I list below. An unnamed James Bond game is in development at Hitman studio IO Interactive, as is a darker title from Elden Ring creator FromSoftware called The Duskbloods, which will be exclusive to the Switch 2.

The full list of announced Nintendo Switch 2 games includes:

Borderlands 4
Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster
Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition
Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion
Deltarune
Donkey Kong Bananza
Drag x Drive
EA Sports FC
EA Sports Madden NFL
Elden Ring Tarnished Edition
Enter the Gungeon 2
Fast Fusion
Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade
Fortnite
Hades 2
Hitman World of Assassination — Signature Edition
Hogwarts Legacy
Hollow Knight: Silksong
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment
Kirby Air Riders
Kirby and the Forgotten Land — Nintendo Switch 2 Edition and Star-Crossed World
Kunitsu-Gai: Path of the Goddess
Mario Kart World
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond — Nintendo Switch 2 Edition
NBA 2K
Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour
Nobunaga’s Ambition: Awakening Complete Edition
Pokemon Legends: Z-A — Nintendo Switch 2 Edition
Project 007
Puyo Puyo Tetris 2S
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma — Nintendo Switch 2 Edition
Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 — Nintendo Switch 2 Edition
Split Fiction
Star Wars Outlaws
Starseeker: Astroneer Expeditions
Street Fighter 6
Super Mario Party Jamboree — Nintendo Switch 2 Edition and Jamboree TV
Survival Kids
The Duskbloods
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild — Nintendo Switch 2 Edition
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom — Nintendo Switch 2 Edition
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 and 4
WWE 2K
Yakuza 0 Definitive Edition

Among these titles, you can see the full list of June 5 Switch 2 launch day games here.

Nintendo GameCube library coming to Switch 2

The Nintendo Switch Online game library will add GameCube games to the Switch 2. On launch day, these games will initially include The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, SoulCalibur 2 and F-Zero GX, with each game getting enhanced graphics. Online multiplayer will also be added to certain titles. Super Mario Sunshine, Super Mario Strikers and Luigi’s Mansion are among the games set to arrive later. At launch, Nintendo will also sell a GameCube controller, which will be wireless and include a C button for GameChat.

Technologies

Which Nintendo Switch Accessories Will Work With the Nintendo Switch 2?

The next-gen Switch console has many physical changes, but that doesn’t mean you’ll have to get rid of all your gear for the original Switch.

Nintendo detailed the highly anticipated Switch 2 on Wednesday. We still have to wait a few more months before we can actually get our hands on it — June 5, to be precise — but that gives us plenty of time to make sure we have all the extra accessories we’ll need. On the upside, many of the accessories for the original Nintendo Switch will work with the Switch 2, but some important ones won’t.

Controllers

Joy-Con

The Switch 2 will come with its own set of updated Joy-Cons, but you can still use the original ones. They won’t attach physically to the Switch 2, as the new Joy-Cons are larger and attach magnetically, but you can pair the original Joy-Cons wirelessly. That way, you can still play with your family and friends without buying extras.

Pro Controller

Nintendo’s excellent Pro Controller also got an upgrade for the Switch 2, but as with the Joy-Cons, the original Pro Controller will work fine with the Switch 2. It will pair wirelessly with the console and can be charged via a USB cable from the Switch 2 dock. The new Pro will have some decent upgrades, like enlarged buttons and triggers, GameCube-esque ergonomics, and programmable back paddles, but it will also cost $80, so if you don’t feel you need to upgrade, you won’t have to.

Other Nintendo controllers

Nintendo also clarified that all the wireless versions of the NES, SNES, N64 and Sega Genesis controllers will work wirelessly with the Switch 2. However, it also said that not every game would be compatible, but we don’t know yet which games those would be. It’s probably safe to assume all games supporting those controllers (also compatible with the Switch 2) would work, but we’ll update this once we know more.

Third-party controllers

This is the big question mark at the moment. We have not been able to confirm anything from either Nintendo or other controller manufacturers if third-party controllers will work with the Switch 2. I assume that since the original Pro Controller will work with the Switch 2, at the very least, officially licensed third-party controllers will work, but as of publish time, we have not had any confirmation about support for third-party controllers on the Switch 2. One vendor I spoke with confirmed it is currently in talks with Nintendo about compatibility but couldn’t share any details.

MicroSD cards

One of the biggest (and most welcome) upgrades to the Switch 2 is an 8x increase in internal storage from 32GB to 256GB. That means a microSD is no longer an immediate must-have accessory. That’s also good because not every microSD card that worked with the original Switch will work with the Switch 2.

Nintendo specified that only microSD Express cards will work with Switch 2. You can still view screenshots and videos from your non-Express microSD cards, but you won’t be able to save or load games or save data to them. You can tell if your microSD card is Express because it will have a little EX printed on it.

Bluetooth headphones

The original Nintendo Switch infamously did not have Bluetooth capabilities, so you had to plug in headphones or buy an adapter. Nintendo remedied this with updated Switch versions and kept that functionality for the Switch 2. That means all your favorite Bluetooth headphones should work just fine with your new Switch 2.

Docks

The Switch 2 dock is also getting a big upgrade. It’s larger with rounded corners and now supports 4K resolution at 60 frames per second, a welcome upgrade for a modern game console. That being said, for households with multiple Switch consoles and TVs, you may not want to buy extra Switch 2 docks to use around your home.

However, Nintendo confirmed that the original Switch Dock is incompatible with the Switch 2, which also means it’s likely the original Switch will not work in the Switch 2 Dock.

Third-party docks

Several docks not made by Nintendo work just fine with the first-generation Switch, so there’s no reason to expect they would not be compatible with the Switch 2 as long as they provide adequate power. However, once again, we’ve not had any confirmation, so we can’t say for sure.

Chargers, cables and adapters

Chargers

The first-generation Switch was notoriously fickle with non-Nintendo chargers, particularly when docked, and the Switch 2 looks likely to continue that trend. The Switch 2 has a different power input from the original Switch so that the original Switch charger won’t work for TV mode with the Switch 2. You can still charge the Switch 2 with it by plugging it in directly, but that’s it.

We also don’t know anything about third-party chargers for the Switch 2 yet. There were several that worked perfectly fine with the original Switch, but we don’t yet know the power draw of the Switch 2, so we can’t say for sure which chargers will work. Hopefully, we’ll find out more closer to launch, but for right now, the only charger that we know will work for TV mode with the Switch 2 is the charger that comes with it.

Cables

The Switch 2 most likely supports HDMI 2.1, which means the HDMI cable that came with the original Switch won’t work. Nintendo has confirmed as much, though, as with most other accessories, it hasn’t given specifics as to whether third-party HDMI cables will work or not. We’ll have to wait to find out. The Switch 2 will have an HDMI cable, so at least there’s that.

Adapters

Nintendo has confirmed that the only adapter that works with the Switch 2 is the GameCube Controller adapter. This lets you connect a wired GameCube controller to the Switch Dock, and Nintendo says it can be used in TV mode while connected to a Switch 2 Dock. We don’t know anything else about any other adapters at this time.

Nintendo did give us quite a lot of information about the Switch 2 today, including the price, most of the key upgrades, and the launch date, but as you can see, there’s still a lot we don’t know. We’ll continue to update this list and our other coverage of the Nintendo Switch 2 as we learn more.

Technologies

Save Up to 20% on Your Phone Plan Thanks to Ultra Mobile’s Spring Sale

Need to lower your monthly phone bill? Switching to Ultra Mobile could be a wise decision. We’ll explain why.

If you’re looking for more ways to decrease your spending, switching to a cheaper phone plan could be just the ticket. Many cellphone providers lavish perks on new clients, so making the switch could be a smart financial decision. For those looking for a new cellphone plan, we’re glad to announce that Ultra Mobile is offering up to 20% off on select phone plans until May 18.

Ultra Mobile is also offering 10% off its three- and six-month contracts as a part of this deal. These discounts are available for deals providing 5GB, 10GB or 15GB of data per month. The carrier also has two Unlimited Plans you can choose from to nab this discount. Note: Ultra Mobile has a Talk & Text plan and a 3GB plan, but they aren’t currently eligible for any discounts.

The biggest savings right now are for 12-month plans. You can save 20% on Ultra Mobile 5GB, 10GB, 15GB, Ultra Unlimited and Unlimited Plus Plans. The Ultra Unlimited plan includes unlimited 5G, 4G and LTE data, international calls to more than 90 countries, unlimited national and global texts and a $5 credit for international calls and roaming per month. You’ll also get 10GB of hotspot data per month.

The Unlimited Plus Plan includes 20GB of hotspot data, as well as all the aforementioned features. You’ll also get a $10 credit for international calls and a $10 credit for roaming per month. Keep in mind that your device and SIM must be compatible with Ultra Mobile, so make sure to confirm that before making the switch. Finally, these are prepaid plans, which means up-front payment is required.

Hey, did you know? CNET Deals texts are free, easy and save you money.

Looking for a new phone plan but aren’t sure if this deal is for you? We have the best cheap phone plans and the best family phone plans lists so you can find what works for you.

Why this deal matters

Your phone bill can strain your monthly budget, but prepaid plans like these are a great way to save. Ultra Mobile’s plans are already relatively inexpensive, but these deals can shave 10% to 20% off per month. Though three- and six-month plans are available, its biggest savings are on 12-month plans.