Despite Microsoft’s best efforts to make Edge the best web browser, it’s still used by many as a means to download their actual browser of choice,Google Chrome. Over the years, we’ve seen and cringed at, Microsoft’s best efforts to keep users from using its competitor’s products, which hasbeen going on for years. The browser, the search engine, and even the actual operating system will practically beg you to please keep using Microsoft’s products. Now, using Bing’s new AI-fueled experience to look up a download link for Google Chrome has yielded a new result.
MicrosoftBing’s new generative AI chat experience, in addition to being a chatbot, can occasionally insert itself in certain search results, providing context and information it thinks might help you out. It’ll also link to relevant sources for that specific information. Looking up “Chrome” in Bing generated an AI response, except, as spotted byThe Verge, the AI searched for “news articles about Bing features” instead of searching for what they were looking for. It then returned text advertising Bing’s features, and saying why it’s better than competitors.
Perhaps shadier than the AI being outright non-helpful, however, is that the text reads more like ad copy than AI-generated text. It reads as if someone pre-wrote this and made the AI show it as a “response” for certain specific queries. This is perpetuated by the fact that the AI seems to output the same text every single time — generally, when you’re generating text with AI, it’ll output similar, yet slightly different text, which doesn’t seem to be happening here at all.
Microsoft turned the feature off soon after The Verge published its coverage of this, and it provided a statement to the publication that reads, “We often experiment with new features, UX, and behaviors to test, learn, and improve experiences for our customers. These tests are often brief and do not necessarily represent what is ultimately or broadly provided to customers.”
Microsoft has done some hostile stuff in the past trying to get people to stick to its services and products, but this seems misleading — and it’s a bad look for Bing’s new chat feature as Microsoft positions it as a competitor toChatGPTandGoogle Bard.
