Technologies

7 Ways Microsoft Uses AI to Make You Actually Care About Bing

It isn’t just ChatGPT on the Bing website. Microsoft blends OpenAI’s language technology with its own Bing search engine.

Microsoft Bing faces a big problem: Google utterly eclipses search engine. But Bing has a chance to grab more attention for itself with the OpenAI‘s language technology, the artificial intelligence foundation that’s made the ChatGPT service a huge hit.

For the brainier Bing to work, though, Microsoft has to get the details right. ChatGPT can be useful, but it can be flaky, too, and nobody wants a search engine they can’t trust.

Microsoft has put a lot of thought and its own programming resources into the challenge. It’s wrestled with issues like how AI-powered Bing shows ads, reveals its data sources, and grounds the AI technology in reality so you get trustworthy results, not the digital hallucinations that can be hard to spot in machine-generated information.

I spoke to Jordi Ribas, leader of Bing search and AI, to dig more deeply into the overhauled Bing search engine. He’s a big enough fan that he used the technology to help him write his boss a memo about it. «It probably saved me two to three hours,» he said, and it improved the Spanish executive’s English, too.

When the technology expands beyond today’s very small test group, it’ll let millions of us dig for much more complicated information, like whether an Ikea loveseat will fit into your car. And we’ll all be able to see whether it truly gives Google a run for its money. But for now, are seven aspects of Bing AI that I learned.

Bing AI isn’t just a repackaged version of ChatGPT

Microsoft blends its Bing search engine with the large language model technology from OpenAI, the AI lab that built the ChatGPT tool that’s fired up excitement about AI and that Microsoft invested in. You can get ChatGPT-like results using Bing’s «chat» option — for example, «Write a short essay on the importance of Taoism.» But for other queries, Bing and OpenAI technology are blended through an orchestration system Microsoft calls Prometheus.

For instance, you can Bing, «I like the band Led Zeppelin. What other musicians should I listen to?» OpenAI first paraphrases that prompt to «bands similar to Led Zeppelin,» then repackages Bing search results in a bulleted list. Each suggestion, like Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones, comes with a two-sentence description.

Bing AI cites its sources — sometimes

When you give ChatGPT a prompt, it’ll respond with text it generates, but it won’t tell you where it got that information. The AI system is trained on vast amounts of the information on the internet, but it’s hard to draw a direct line between that training data and ChatGPT’s output.

On Bing, though, factual information is often annotated, because Bing knows the source from its indexing of the web. For example, in the Led Zeppelin prompt above, Bing includes a link at the top of its answer to a Musicaroo post, 13 Bands That Sound Like Led Zeppelin, and includes that link and others from MusicalMum and Producer Hive.

That sourcing transparency helps address a big criticism of AI, making it easier to evaluate whether the response is accurate or a mere AI hallucination. But it doesn’t always appear. In the essay on Taoism above, for example, there aren’t any sources, footnotes or links at all.

Some source links are ads that make Microsoft money

The Bing AI’s elaborate answers provide a new way for Microsoft to generate money from ads. In traditional Bing searches, the «organic» search results that Bing judges to be most relevant are separate from items placed by advertisers. But with Bing AI searches, the two types of information can be blended.

For example, in its response to the query «plan me a one-week trip to Iceland without a rental car,» AI-powered Bing suggests several destinations. In one of them, several words are underlined: «You can visit places like Vík, Skógafoss, Seljalandsfoss, and Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon by joining a multi-day tour or taking a bus.» Hovering over that link shows three sources for that information and an ad from a tour company. The advertisement is the top item of the three and is labeled «ad.»

«When you look at those citations, sometimes they are ads,» Ribas said. «When it’s more of a purchasing intent query, you hover over it and you’ll see the list of the references and sometimes it’s an ad. Then sometimes in the conversation itself, you’re going to see product ads, like if you do a hotel query.»

Ad revenue is a big deal, since it takes weeks of work on an enormous cluster of computers for OpenAI to build a single update to its language model, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman estimates it costs a few cents to process each ChatGPT prompt. Bing, even though it’s a distant second to Google in the search engine market, still handles millions of queries a day.

Google plans to open access to its Bard AI chatbot soon, but it won’t be including ads to begin with.

OpenAI-boosted results are more relevant than plain old Bing

The fundamental measure of a search engine’s usefulness is whether its results are relevant, and the OpenAI technology brings a huge boost in the measurement that Microsoft uses to score its search engine results’ relevance.

«My team, working super, super hard in a given year, might move that metric by one point,» Ribas said, but OpenAI’s technology boosted it three points in one fell swoop. «It’s just never happened before in the history of Bing,» Ribas said.

That relevance boost is just for ordinary search results, Ribas added. OpenAI’s technology can further improve Bing with its chat interface that offers more elaborate answers and a follow-up exchange.

OpenAI makes Bing better with languages besides English

One particular area where Bing has been weak is searches that aren’t in English, and Ribas said OpenAI helps there. A lot of Bing’s three-point gain in relevance scoring «came from international markets,» Ribas said.

OpenAI’s large language model, or LLM, is trained with text from 100 languages. «Catalan is my first language. I can have a dialogue in Catalan. It works really, really well,» Ribas said

Bing brings OpenAI’s results up to date

Large language models like OpenAI’s GPT-3.5, the foundation for ChatGPT, are slow to build and improve, which means they don’t move at the speed of the web or of conventional search engines. GPT-3.5, for example, was trained in 2021, so it doesn’t have any idea about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the effects of recent inflation on consumers, or Xi Jinping securing his third term as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.

Bing often does know this more recent information, though. «When you bring in the Bing results, then you will get fresh results on that complete answer,» Ribas said.

Bing ‘grounds’ OpenAI’s flights of fancy

Microsoft uses its Bing data to try to avoid situations where OpenAI’s more creative technology could lead people astray. The more factual a query and answer are, the more Bing’s technology is used in the answer, Ribas said. This «grounding» significantly reduces AI’s problems with making stuff up: «It will reduce hallucination, which is … an ongoing battle,» Ribas said.

But Microsoft doesn’t want its grounding system to squash all the magic out of the AI. There’s a reason ChatGPT has been so captivating. The Prometheus system decides on the priorities for each query.

«We had to find the sweet spot between over-grounding the model and keeping it interesting,» Ribas said. «We have a measurement of the interestingness of the results, and we have a measurement for the groundedness of the results. The more the query is looking for something very factual, the more we weight the grounded. The more the query is supposed to be creative, the less we weight the grounded. I kept telling my team, I want my cake and eat it too.»

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Wednesday, Oct. 29

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Oct. 29.

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

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? It’s a bit trickier than normal, so read on for the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Skill taught at lifeguard training, for short
Answer: CPR

4A clue: Bop it!
Answer: HEAD

6A clue: Not given anything to eat
Answer: UNFED

8A clue: Twist it! Pull it!
Answer: TAFFY

9A clue: Best of the best
Answer: ELITE

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Means of getting trash to a basement dumpster
Answer: CHUTE

2D clue: Word that can precede «code» or «colony»
Answer: PENAL

3D clue: «Baby Beluga» musician
Answer: RAFFI

5D clue: Neatly skillful
Answer: DEFT

7D clue: Change the color of, as hair
Answer: DYE

Technologies

Samsung’s Wild-Looking Tri-Fold Phone Debuts at APEC Summit in South Korea

The Galaxy phonemaker showed off a twin-hinged foldable at a Korean consumer tech show.

Samsung unveiled its first triple-display foldable phone for consumers at a tech exhibition hall during the APEC CEO Summit in South Korea. The Korean publication Dailian reported that the new phone will launch in November or December.

The tri-fold phone, which doesn’t have an official name yet, was revealed as a prototype on display. Whereas the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Galaxy Z Flip 7 fold in half along one hinge, Samsung’s next device folds in two places to be as compact as a typical smartphone with a 6.5-inch outer screen, then unfolds for a tablet-size 10-inch screen, according to The Chosun Daily. Compare that with dual-screen foldables that have inner screens measuring approximately 8 inches. The Z Fold 7 has a single crease on its main screen; the new tri-fold could have two creases.

Samsung has been at the forefront of foldable phones since releasing the first Galaxy Fold in 2019 and the Galaxy Z Flip in 2020. At the time, it faced fierce competition from Motorola and Huawei — the latter of which gained a significant lead in 2024 with its own tri-fold Huawei Mate XT, which was followed by a second version. Samsung’s launch of its own competitor keeps the company in the game.

Here’s your first look at the Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold.
Screen when folded: 6.5-inch
Screen when unfolded: 10-inch
It might be announced later this week.
Source: Chosun Media pic.twitter.com/EhT4i1hW2k

— Trakin Tech English (@trakinenglish) October 28, 2025

These two consumer tri-folds have their differences. The Huawei Mate XT’s two hinges fold in opposite directions like an accordion, giving it a Z shape, while Samsung’s device has two screens that fold inward in what Dailian (through Google Translate) asserts is «G-shaped.» Given that Samsung has branded its foldable line as the Z-series, it’s ironic that the company didn’t adopt that shape and format for its tri-fold.

Samsung didn’t release any more details about its tri-fold, though Dailian expects it to be even pricier than the Galaxy Z Fold 7, which starts at $2,000in the US. From photos of the device — apparently a prototype — behind glass, you can see a front-facing camera on the inner display (when unfolded) and outer screen (when folded up). But since Samsung also didn’t show the device folding, there are a lot of questions about its durability and capability before its supposed launch in a month or two.

It’s not a total surprise to see Samsung’s tri-fold ready to go. For years, the company has displayed various flexible display designs, including three-screen formats, during CES. In the last few months, there’s been a steady flow of rumors and outright executive confirmations that Samsung was gearing up to unveil its tri-fold. Now we’ll have to see whether the company that’s fought so hard to be at the forefront of smartphone design can release another format that dominates the folding phone niche — all before one of its biggest rivals, Apple, even releases its first foldable.

Samsung didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Technologies

Be Wary of AI Videos as Hurricane Melissa Hits Jamaica. How to Spot a Fake

AI-generated storm videos are spreading rapidly online. Here’s where to find reliable information.

As Category 5 Hurricane Melissa bears down on Jamaica with winds topping 180 mph, social media is being hit by a surge of AI-generated and misleading videos, showing catastrophic flooding, collapsing buildings and rescue scenes that never happened.

Across X, TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp and other social media platforms, fake clips spread quickly, racking up millions of views in hours. Many of these videos are spliced footage from past storms or clips created entirely with text-to-video AI tools.

In times of crisis, like a dangerous and imminent natural disaster, these fake videos can create confusion, panic and distraction at a time when accuracy can be life-saving.

Natural disasters have always bred rumors and recycled footage, but the rise of AI-generated video has supercharged the problem. Tools like OpenAI’s Sora and other AI-video platforms can render realistic-looking images of storms, floods and damage scenes in seconds, reaching millions online in just a few hours.

Read also: The Deepfakes Are Winning. How Can You Tell if a Video Is Real or Sora AI?

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

Why storms are a magnet for fake news

Storms are visual, emotional and fast-moving, which is the perfect recipe for viral misinformation. In years past, videos were often taken out of context or labeled as a different storm. Now, they can be digitally fabricated from scratch.

Some depict apocalyptic flooding that hasn’t occurred, while others claim to show «real-time» conditions hours before landfall. Several videos that have circled this week include images of sharks swimming in the storm surge and unsettling depictions of human suffering.

False videos like these can exaggerate the danger of the storm, create panic, undermine trust and distract emergency responders, as misinformation pulls attention from verified reports.

The following three videos are all fake. They are labeled (albeit briefly) with the Sora watermark, which indicates they were made in OpenAI’s video generator.

How to separate truth from fiction online

When social feeds fill with dramatic hurricane clips, it’s important to separate truth from fiction.

«You have to be very discerning,» Senator Dana Morris Dixon, Jamaica’s information minister, said. «You have to know what is good information from bad information. If you want to know where the storm is going, if you want to know what to do, you need to look for official sources.»

Dixon highlighted that the Jamaica Information Service, Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management’s information sites and the Office of the Prime Minister page are resources for legitimate, timely updates.

Here are some ways to be discerning.

Check the source. If the video comes from an unfamiliar account, lacks a timestamp or carries no recognizable media branding, assume it is fake until verified. Also, look for the Sora watermark indicating it was made in OpenAI’s app, or read the comments to see if someone else has flagged the video as fake.

Ask yourself if it’s new and local. Does the geography match Jamaica? Is the footage recent? Many «Melissa» clips could actually be from past Caribbean or Gulf storms.

Cross-check before believing. Confirm through trusted outlets, like the Meteorological Service of Jamaica and the US National Hurricane Center, or established media like the BBC, Reuters or the Associated Press.

Pause before sharing. A viral video can cause harm if it spreads misinformation. Wait until a credible source verifies it before reposting.

Go local. If you’re in the affected area, rely on local emergency agencies, radio stations and city or county-level officials for evacuation and safety updates.

Monitor official alerts. For real-time instructions, stick with government channels and local emergency feeds. Your safety depends on accurate information, not viral content.

As AI-generated media becomes easier to produce, hurricanes like Melissa offer a preview of a new reality: one in which you can’t trust much of the information you see online.

Staying safe means being skeptical and diligent when looking for accurate and even lifesaving news.

Read also: What Is AI Slop? Everything to Know About the Terrible Content Taking Over the Internet