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Microsoft Unveils Improved AI-powered Search Features for Bing (engadget.com)

Microsoft unveiled a handful of new intelligent search features for Bing at an event held in San Francisco this week. From a report: Powered by AI, the search updates are meant to provide more thorough answers and allow for more conversational or general search queries. First, when answering a question, Bing will now validate its answers by sourcing a number of websites, not just one. And in cases where there are two valid perspectives, like, for example, in response to the question, "Is cholesterol bad," they'll be aggregated and Bing will show both at the top of the search page. Additionally, when there's more than one way to answer a query, Bing will provide a carousel of answers. The Bing team is also adding relevant analogies or comparisons to search answers that make the provided information easier to understand. [...] Bing will also help users find answers to broad or conversational queries by asking clarifying questions that will help refine the search. And Microsoft also introduced Bing's advanced image search capabilities, which will now let users search images or objects within images to, for example, help them track down a particular fashion item they'd like to purchase.

38 comments

  1. The users will be thrilled! by nospam007 · · Score: 0

    Both of them.

    1. Re:The users will be thrilled! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Someone said that Bing was good for searching for porn, but nothing else. The 2 or 3 times I've used Bing, I've gotten wacky results.

    2. Re:The users will be thrilled! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      >searching for porn
      >gotten wacky results

      Sounds like it worked great!

    3. Re:The users will be thrilled! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I like Bing and use it regularly. When it doesn't hit the results I need I turn to google. I too have heard it is good for porn. Probably. One of the reasons I use it though is that it doesn't filter torrent results as harshly as google. Sometimes I just want more trackers.

    4. Re:The users will be thrilled! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Also, it's not AI. It's not even close to being AI. It's the exact opposite of AI.

      Dishonest marketing assholes and brain-dead consumers are why terms like this get misused and then adopted to mean something entirely different than they are supposed to.

    5. Re: The users will be thrilled! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've worked in I. T. for over 20 years and never heard of it, what is Bing?

  2. It looks like you're writing a letter by jfdavis668 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Would you like help?

  3. Outlook by sycodon · · Score: 2

    I'd be happy if Outlook simply respected the fucking quotes when you search for something so that searching for "Cloud Admin & Security" didn't return every fucking email with, "&" in it.

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    1. Re:Outlook by Baron_Yam · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I remember a time when search engines respected logical operators, quotes and parentheses. A time before it was decided that the algorithms knew better than I did how form a keyword search and all queries should be parsed as natural language.

    2. Re:Outlook by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Our company switched from Gmail to Outlook365. Oh my god I hate it. The search is pretty much useless. The "helping features" only make using more difficult. There are some useless features like "you can change the theme", but you can't set calendar reminder into 2 minutes, you have to pick either 0 minutes or 10 minutes. If any other company is making such switch, protest as hard as you can.

    3. Re: Outlook by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You just...type âoe2 minutesâ into the dialog box. You donâ(TM)t have to pick one of the pre-filled options. This has been a feature of Outlook since *at least* 2001, so itâ(TM)s your own fault that you donâ(TM)t know how to use it properly.

  4. Somewhat on-topic by IWantMoreSpamPlease · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I had to use Bing the other day for a search engine. I was playing around with an old system with a base install of Win2k SP4 on it.
    But nothing else had been upgraded, so IE5.
    Only search engine site that would load, was Bing.
    I searched for several, what I thought were, basic ideas (win2k security patches post SP4, latest version of IE to work on Win2k, etc) and the results Bing returned were *garbage*, like BS spam sites, crack-sites, stuff that wasn't even relevant, except for keyboard bombing.
    A pathetic search engine. Even Microsoft's own sites weren't in the top 2-3 hits.
    I don't know how many people use Bing, but I feel sorry for them.

    --
    So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
    1. Re:Somewhat on-topic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bullshit. You're either an immature Microsoft-hating troll or just plain stupid. One thing I like about Bing as that often the results are NOT *garbage*. Example: When my old man tried searching for iTunes on Google, he got a bunch of fake websites prompting people to pay for downloading iTunes. Fact is, because Google is the largest, every scam website in existence will tailor their sites to rank high on Google. Enjoy your garbage.

  5. Yo Dawg, I Heard You Like "AI" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So I posted yet another Slashdot article about "AI" so you could "AI" while you use algorith-I mean "AI"!

  6. AI is the new APPS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    AI apps app'ing ahead of Luddites who don't trust AI apps!

  7. Sometimes Bing is better than Google by Baron_Yam · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I've done some image searches where Bing produces results and Google comes up with none.

    I'm pretty sure Bing has better video search (which the conspiracy theorist in me thinks might be due to Google wanting to favour YouTube results).

    Why you still need Google to search for Microsoft KB articles is a mystery for the ages. You'd think that'd be a major embarrassment that Microsoft would have had as #1 on their priority list to fix.

  8. All your search queries are belong to us by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oh wait, that's been true for decades, carry on.

    Remember folks, if you aren't the paying customer, you are the product.

    Even if you are the paying customer, you ate probably still the product.

  9. Clippy Search...? by hazardPPP · · Score: 1

    More properly known as Clippit. I'm sure it'll be great!

  10. improving the best mainstream search engine... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    for porn is a *win* for all of humankind.

  11. I HOPE we don't use MS AI for that example... by adosch · · Score: 1

    And in cases where there are two valid perspectives, like, for example, in response to the question, "Is cholesterol bad,"

    And that is the AI search example they use to boast about their new search feature? As educated as (most) of society and populations in general are these days, we know a hell of a lot more concrete general knowledge that we can all just matter-of-factly say out of our flapping lips solely because it's proven and backed by substantial scientific and application proof, why the fuck are we wasting training it with Johnny Six-pack and Sally Manicure's questions?

    Back off my going-overboard rant here, but I hope we don't train a massive neural AI network with fucking stupid ass questions and it deems human population 'annoying and unnecessary'. Put this to good use for pete's sake and I realize it will --- Microsoft will definitely have some eyes-only interfaces tied into their Azure platform for serious interest groups, but it's just debilitating to watch the absolute computing behemoths and triumphs humans have created in the last 10-15 years alone in AI, HPC on the scale it's been at, in large part, to the tech giants, being reduced to re-asking, "Is fire hot?" or "What color is blue?"

    1. Re:I HOPE we don't use MS AI for that example... by Rhipf · · Score: 1

      Actually "Is cholesterol bad?" is probably a rather good query to train AI. The answer to this question isn't a straight forward yes or no. There is good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. Does the search engine just show all the sites that state it is bad/good or does it give a more nuanced result showing that there is good cholesterol and bad cholesterol?

  12. "Powered by AI" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think the term AI has now been completely eroded by marketing as a replacement for the boring "has programmed algorithms", i.e. software.

  13. Rename it to Bling. by TheInternet01 · · Score: 1

    So many more people be like yo bling search it. No one wants to say they binged it.

    --
    Uplink Hosting - Web/email at an affordable price with high performance - https://uplinkhosting.ca/link.php?id=3
  14. Microsoft Unveils Improved... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Consumer spy tools. More news at 11.

  15. Bing vs. Google by Bing by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

    I have performed the following searches in bing.com (US as country):
    - "Is bing bad?". There is no vs. comparison at the top and the first 4 results ("Is Bing still bad?", "Whats so bad about Bing?", "This is why you dislike Bing", "Why Bing sucks. Top 5 reasons") seem to be very clear on this front.
    - "is google bad?". A vs. comparison does appear above the standard search results: "Google is evil" vs. "Why is google so good". The first 4 results below ("Google is evil", "Google: good or bad", "Is too much Google a bad thing?", "7 reasons why Google Chrome, the new Google browser, is a bad idea") aren't as clear as before.
    Conclusion: according to Bing, both cholesterol and Google can be considered good or bad, unlikely Bing itself which is undoubtedly bad. LOL.

    DISCLAIMER: I personally don't really care about any of them as far as only use Hooli search.
    DISCLAIMER (serious version): I am currently testing Yandex (with quite a few limitations on the English search front, but pretty good for specific searches like stuff related to programming or being shared in a copyright-careless way) and will be testing Bing next. So far, Google is the one delivering the best results but I don't like quite a few of their policies; StartPage is a quite nice alternative.

    --
    Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
  16. What is the best browser to download Firefox? by sandbagger · · Score: 1

    I wonder what Bing will say?

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    ---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
    1. Re:What is the best browser to download Firefox? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When you enter "What is the best browser" in bing, it replies Firefox. So, good answer.

  17. Bing is still a thing? by Mysticalfruit · · Score: 1

    Bing is still a search engine? Holy shit. I thought they'd killed that thing years ago.

    --
    Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
  18. Give me boolean... by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 1

    Maybe it's the way my brain works, but I prefer boolean.

    "2017" AND "Honda Civic" AND "Engine Capacity" gives very precise results, far better than any imprecise conversational query. Leave the AI, give me a good means of looking things up in a database, which is really what search is.

  19. Searching for Google will now be a conversation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So you're telling us that searching for Google will now be AI trying to convince us that Bing is better now? just like when you install Chrome and want to put it as the default browser, Windows 10 tell you that you "should" try Edge instead...

  20. Sadly, no one will notice by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 3, Funny
    BING is an recursive acronym Bing Is Not Google.

    It still is not.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  21. Its nearly self aware. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I typed in the phrase Artificial Intelligence and it came up with the following.

    Sarah Connor 11 Mapletree Drive Lynwood

    Sarah Connor 2451 Elmtree Way Inglewood

    Sarah Connor Unit 17/ 84 Park Plaza Drive Hawthorne

    We are in trouble.

  22. Disregard Bing, use DuckDuckGo instead by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

    Get off the Micro$oft treadmill. Also take back your privacy.

  23. A Search Feature In The Bing Search Engine ? by AncalagonTotof · · Score: 1

    Didn't know there was one. Didn't used Bing. That explains.

    Note that a search feature may not be the main feature of search engines, especially the free ones. What ? They're all free ? So, if they're free ...

    --
    Totof
  24. So,... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So, if I ask again "Why is Microsoft so fucked up?", I guess now I'll be gifted with "a carousel of answers"?

  25. Bing doesn't suffer from Google CAPTCHA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    One thing I hate about Google sear4ch: Type in your search words too fast or search for similar terms and you get their fucking CAPTCHA screen. Sometimes the CAPTCHA works. Sometimes it doesn't. Whichever it is always a waste of time.
     
    How about someone write a Chrome Extension so when Google throws their CAPTCHA CRAP at you it automatically diverts the search to Bing or DuckDuckGo instead?
     
    Name the extension after one of the CAPTCHA CUNTS who invented it: Mark D. Lillibridge, Martin Abadi, Krishna Bharat, Andrei Z. Broder; Eran Reshef, Gili Raanan or Eilon Solan. Fuck you assholes for wasting so many human lifetimes.

  26. AI vs controversial information by manu0601 · · Score: 1

    I wonder how this AI will answer to questions such as:

    • Were there Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq?
    • Had Putin rigged the elections to get Trump elected?
    • Who where the Maidan shooters?