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Microsoft’s New AI-Powered Bing: Here Are 5 Things You’ll Be Able to Do

Bing will refine search results, summarize topics and generate writing as your «co-pilot.»

Microsoft on Tuesday announced an enhanced Bing, detailing how it’s using the AI tech behind ChatGPT to add in a slew of new capabilities to the longtime second-place search engine. There’s a waiting list for the service now, and Microsoft says it will be available broadly in the coming months. There’ll be no charge for the service.

CEO Satya Nadella said the juiced-up search service aims to take on queries that aren’t getting good results on today’s search engines. People increasingly use search engines to get advice and information on complex topics, not just a link to a website, and the AI boost to Bing aims to make it more usable.

«It’s a new day in search,» Nadella said during the event on Tuesday.

ChatGPT, an AI-powered chatbot from a company called OpenAI, burst onto the scene in November with a breathtaking capacity for drawing information from the web and presenting it in plausible essays, poems and other formats. It set off an intense interest in AI that has captured the attention of millions, including the Big Tech players. Last month, Microsoft said it would be investing billions of dollars into the company. Meanwhile, Google, the dominant search engine on the web, on Tuesday announced Bard, its ChatGPT challenger.

Microsoft says its technology makes Bing your co-pilot on the web. Here’s a taste of what you can try out with the AI-powered search.

Search

You can search on Bing.com, as always. What’s new here is that Microsoft has applied OpenAI’s model to its search ranking engine. That led to a huge leap in the relevance of search results, the company says, so Microsoft believes you’ll find better responses to your basic searches on Bing.

The AI also augments the search results with written summaries. A use case Microsoft predicts will be popular is planning a trip. If you’re going to New Orleans for three days, for example, what should you do? A search on Bing will show you not just links to sites with sight-seeing and museum suggestions for the Big Easy, but also a sidebar with a summary of information from around the web, written by AI. The sidebar will link to sources that can let you explore further.

Ask for more details

If you want to ask more questions after your initial Bing search, you can click the chat icon near the top of the search page. Here you can refine the results. In the trip planning example, you can do things like clarify that you’re visiting New Orleans with kids, or ask for a three-day itinerary for your visit.

Bing can offer pretty fine-grained results in this conversational format. In addition to a detailed itinerary with descriptions of the places you’ll visit, you can ask for travel times between activities in New Orleans, for example.

This also applies to searching for advice on a home improvement project, like installing air conditioning in your house. If you clarify that you have air ducts in your home already, for example, it can give you information more relevant to your project.

Write something

The new Bing can write for you. After you research your home improvement project, for example, you ask Bing to write an email to your partner summarizing what you found. You can edit the writing, click into the text box of a new email and have Bing insert it there.

You can also ask Bing to write something with a fresh prompt, similar to many examples of ChatGPT’s writing that users have shared online recently. Anything from the whimsical «write a story about a curious dog who goes to the moon for preschoolers» to the more serious «write a letter to my apartment contesting an upcoming increase in rent» can generate text. You can also tweak the tone of the writing, like requesting it be funny.

Get context for a website

On the newly revamped Edge browser, you’ll be able to open a Bing sidebar and get more information about something you’re looking at online. You can open a product listing on Amazon, for example, and then open up the sidebar to ask Bing to tell you about the product. It’ll give you a summary of the product’s specs, cost and use cases.

For a specific iRobot vacuum, for example, you can also ask Bing for examples of reviews from cat owners. That’ll pull up quotes from Amazon reviews for the vacuum that mention cats and some summary from Bing.

You can also ask Bing to give you the key takeaways from a long document, and then compare it to another document.

Ask a broad question

If you’ve ever typed a query like «who are some famous Mexican painters?» into a search engine, you’re probably familiar with the experience of getting an excerpt from one website, a list of relevant people and a link to Wikipedia. The request is so broad that you typically have to leave the search page to get the answer. The new Bing wants you to stay, at least for a while.

Ask about Mexican painters on the new Bing and you’ll get a written summary of the key players and a description of their work. You can click on links to sources to learn more, if you like, or you can ask for more fine-grained results in the chat function.

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.

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WhatsApp’s New Update Lets You Encrypt Chat Backups Using Passkeys

Use your face, finger or code instead of a password or 64-digit key.

Face, finger or lock-screen code: These passkeys are all you will need to encrypt your WhatsApp chat backups in the near future, the messaging app announced Thursday. Meta-owned WhatsApp, the most popular messaging app in the world, said it would be rolling out the changes over the upcoming months. 

«Now, with just a tap or a glance, the same security that protects your personal chats and calls on WhatsApp is applied to your chat backups so they are always safe, accessible and private,» the company said.

A representative for WhatsApp did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Passkeys are rapidly overtaking passwords as an easier and more secure way to allow computer users to log in or sign on. Instead of remembering our average of 301 passwords, passkeys use facial or fingerprint recognition — or a lock screen code — to sign in. According to recent research, passkey adoption is growing quickly, speeding up sign-in times and reducing IT help desk incidents.

What are passkeys?

We explain the concept in depth here, but the simplest explanation is that passkeys are password-less logins. To log in, you must look at the screen (facial recognition), tap on the screen (fingerprint recognition) or enter a multi-digit lock screen code.

Many smartphone users already use facial recognition or codes to get into their devices.

In 2021, WhatsApp initially allowed customers to secure their encrypted chat backup with either a password or a 64-digit encryption key.

How to do it, and why

Many WhatsApp consumers have a vast trove of messages, images, videos, and voice notes stored on their phones dating back years. They can either live only on your device or be backed up to Google Drive (for Android devices) or iCloud (for iPhones).

If you haven’t set up a backup schedule, here are the steps:

  • Go to Settings
  • Select Chats
  • Select Chat Backup
  • From there, you can back up to iCloud or Google Account, if you have one, and set your auto backup schedule.

You can still encrypt your chat backup now with a password or 64-digit key, but WhatsApp’s upcoming passkeys rollout will eliminate the need for those.

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Here’s How to Watch the New ‘Scream 7’ Trailer and Stream All the Past Movies

You like scary movies, right? The original Scream from 1996 is streaming for free with ads.

Do you like scary movies? Scream fans will recognize that line, and they received an early Halloween treat on Thursday with the release of a new trailer for Scream 7. Neve Campbell’s return as series heroine Sidney Prescott battling a new Ghostface killer could be the reason to revisit earlier spooky films in the franchise.

The upcoming Scream 7 revolves around Prescott’s facing a masked, knife-wielding murderer (yeah, you know what the mask looks like) who targets her family. It doesn’t hit theaters until Feb. 27, but if you’d like to get prepared and nab some Halloween scares, here’s how to stream Scream 1-6.

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How to stream the Scream movies on Halloween

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ARC Raiders Beginner’s Guide: 7 Tips You’ll Need to Thrive Above Speranza

When a new extraction shooter drops, players quickly learn how brutal death can be. Here’s how to avoid the sting of losing hours of progress.

Developer Embark Studios’ ARC Raiders is the latest extraction shooter that’s set to take the gaming world by storm. As genre veterans and newcomers alike emerge from the underground town of Speranza to take on killer robots — and their fellow humans — players quickly learn how brutal it is to lose loot on death.

Luckily, ARC Raiders is the most «casual» extraction shooter I’ve ever played. That isn’t to say that it’s an easy game, but there are built-in mechanics that make the hardcore gameplay loop far more accessible to a wider audience.

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This guide will equip you with the knowledge you need to make real progress in ARC Raiders before, during and after a raid. Read on to find out about what keybinds you need to learn, what loot to focus on first and how you can quickly recoup some wealth after a string of failed runs.

Figure out your shoulder swap keybind before you ever load into a match

ARC Raiders is a third-person shooter with high-stakes player-versus-player combat. If you want to stand a chance against an enemy player in a serious firefight, you need to know how to swap your camera view from aiming over your character’s right shoulder to aiming over their left shoulder so you can peek around corners without exposing yourself too much.

The default bind for this action on PC is «X,» so get used to pressing that key — or swap it to something you’re more comfortable with. Switching the camera from shoulder to shoulder will help you peek around corners before you expose your body, eliminating blind spots and giving you a competitive advantage. In a game where one death could eliminate hours of progress, you certainly don’t want to give up crucial lines of sight.

Nothing to lose, everything to gain: Utilize the free loadouts

Whether you’re just starting out or you’ve just suffered consecutive squad wipes, you’ll never be without a gun, simple medicine and other basic supplies. You can opt to enter a raid with a «free loadout,» which will provide you with a hodgepodge of low-grade gear. Unlike in other extraction shooters (looking at you, Escape From Tarkov) there’s no cooldown period on taking a free loadout into a match — you can do so whenever you like.

You can’t carry as much weight or pack out as much loot as you’d be able to with any other class mod on, but this is a great way to try to hit a heavily trafficked zone without the risk of losing your good weapons. As a bonus, if you manage to extract with a free loadout, you can trade the «free loadout» mod for a basic green-tier class mod at the vendor named Lance in Speranza.

Focus on completing quests for the denizens of Speranza

ARC Raiders largely cuts you loose to raid, engage in gunfights with other players and loot whatever you like at the start of the game. But it’s highly recommended to follow the guided progression path to get some extra equipment, learn what activities you can get involved in topside and unlock harder missions with more valuable rewards.

Always check in with Speranza’s traders after each raid to see what quests you can take on (or turn in). Some quests will require you to bring certain items back from a raid, and others will have you battling ARC robots or completing objectives throughout the world. Make sure to keep completing quests in order to discover all of the secrets ARC Raiders has to offer.

Loot the dog collar ASAP

Scrappy is a rooster that sits around Speranza collecting crafting materials while you’re out fighting killer machines. He brings the scrap back home to you because he’s a very good boy. Reward him with a dog collar so he feels loved — and so that he levels up and brings you loot even more quickly.

The looting rooster can be upgraded multiple times, but you should focus on finding the dog collar while on a surface run to bring him up to level two at first. The dog collar can be found in random containers, but during the press previews I had the good fortune of finding one at The Dam map’s research and administration area.

When you’re searching for scrap, prioritize big pieces of loot

You’ll find lots of metal scrap, plastic tubing and miscellaneous wires as you rifle through loot containers topside. These are definitely worth stuffing into your pockets; they’re the bread and butter of crafting materials and something you’ll want to stash away early on.

You’ll probably run into what’s a «good problem» to have sooner or later: running out of carry space mid-raid. Raw materials can quickly overflow your inventory, forcing you to extract early. Instead, focus on larger pieces of tech like TVs, radios and big chunks of ARC robots.

Once you successfully extract these items from a match, you can break them down into their parts to gain a variety of crafting components. In a way, they act like compact storage units for multiple raw materials at once.

Grow your net worth. No, seriously

I know, this sounds like the mantra for a bad internet con artist. But building up a small nest egg in ARC Raiders is a great way to ensure you can throw together backup loadouts if you meet an untimely end multiple times in a row. This is bad enough on your own, but if you’re squadding up with friends, you don’t want to be the only one without a good loadout.

If you can’t find the specific materials you’re looking for during a raid, it’s well worth looking for valuables instead. Jewelry, vases and other creature comforts fetch a pretty penny when you sell them to the traders in Speranza. Once you’ve saved up a couple thousand coins, you can trade them in for new weapons, attachments and even stash upgrades.

Guns aren’t the end all, be all of ARC Raiders combat

While it’s incredibly gratifying to run into the thick of battle and wipe a squad out with a strong submachine gun or pick off straggling raiders from afar with a leveled-up bolt-action rifle, you can’t always rely on your guns to win a fight. ARC Raiders features tons of gadgets and deployable equipment that can quickly turn the tide of a fight if used correctly.

Grappling hooks and ziplines add a new level of verticality to gunfights, while high-explosive grenades can flush enemies out of cover. Deployable walls and smoke grenades can counter these tactics or let players safely blitz a wide-open area. If you want to get really clever, you can bring throwable noise lures that will cause ARC robots to converge on your enemies — the AI will do the dirty work and won’t even loot the bodies.

Your strategies are limited if you don’t bring a couple pieces of gear. Consider leaving that extra stack of shield rechargers in your stash — if you need 10 of them in a single match, you probably have bigger problems — and grab a couple of grenades for your next raid instead.

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