What you need to know
- Microsoft has unveiled an update to Bing web searches that overhauls search results with AI-powered answers.
- The new search results page will include a detailed AI-generated answer, followed by curated sources that the AI answer has pulled from.
- Traditional search results will still appear alongside the AI-generated results in a sidebar on the right.
- The new experience is currently available to a small subset of users.
Microsoft has announced a major update to Bing Search that overhauls the search results page with AI at the heart of its experience. Currently available to a small subset of users, Bing Search now incorporates AI-generated answers in addition to traditional search results directly on the search page.
At the very top of the page will be an AI-generated answer created by large and small language models that have reviewed millions of sources to provide the most accurate answer. It will break down that answer into a document index that can provide more information about particular subjects within that search query if you'd like to learn more.
Microsoft describes the new AI-generated search experience as follows:
"This new experience combines the foundation of Bing’s search results with the power of large and small language models (LLMs and SLMs). It understands the search query, reviews millions of sources of information, dynamically matches content, and generates search results in a new AI-generated layout to fulfill the intent of the user’s query more effectively."
The search page will also list the sources that the AI-generated text was created from below the answer, and will even present traditional search results in a sidebar on the right for those who are uninterested in Bing's curated AI experience.
Microsoft says it continues to evaluate the impact that AI in search is having on websites in terms of direct traffic and readership. There's a growing concern in the industry that websites that create content for free will eventually go out of business if AI bots scrape that content to present it directly in a chat window or search page.
This new AI search experience has been built from the ground up with this concern in mind, Microsoft says. The company claims this new experience maintains the same number of clicks to websites that traditional search does, but time will tell if that's true.
Microsoft isn't the only company adding AI-generated results to search pages. Google is also adding Gemini-based answers to search results too, which appear at the top of the search result page.
The new Bing Generative Search experience is rolling out to a small wave of users now, and will likely make its way to more Bing users over the coming months. Curiously, this new experience doesn't appear to use the Copilot brand anywhere.
