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Edge Copilot finally delivers on Microsoft’s Bing Chat promises

Microsoft is finally making the version of Bing Chat we heard about in February a reality. The latest version of Microsoft Edge (111.0.1661.41) includes the Bing Copoilot sidebar, which allows you to chat, generate AI content, and get insights into topics powered by AI.

This is the form of Bing Chat Microsoft originally pitched. Since its launch, the chat portion of Bing Chat has been available through a waitlist that, according to Microsoft, has amassed millions of sign-ups. However, Microsoft also talked about Bing Copilot, which would live in the Edge sidebar and open up the possibility of generating emails, blog posts, and more, as well as provide context for whatever web page you were on.

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the Compose feature in Microsoft Bing Chat.

The Compose tab is where you can generate emails, blog posts, and even lists of ideas. It offers several tones ranging from professional to funny, as well as three lengths and four formats. Enter your prompt, select your parameters, and generate your draft. It doesn’t seem like the length matters much, though; even with a Short length, the AI would spit out five or more paragraphs to most prompts I entered.

Once you’re done, you can regenerate the response to your prompt or copy it from the window. There’s also an Add to site button below the text window, but I wasn’t able to find a use for it.

The Insights tab is contextual, pulling insights from and around the website you’re currently on. For example, on the Digital Trends home page, it pulled some basic information about the website, where users are located, and how most visitors land on the website. It’s not clear where these analytics are coming from, though, outside of a “data from: bing.com” disclaimer at the bottom of the Insights window.

It’s not perfect. With our review of Hogwarts Legacy pulled up, the Q&A section of Copilot includes the question “Is Hogwarts Legacy a curse,” which is a reserved-engineered question based on a bit of stylized copy in the review.  For most websites, this seems like what Edge Copilot is doing. It pulls some questions and key points from the current page while also gathering context from around the internet.

Insights tab in Edge Copilot.

Briefly using the Copilot, the best use I found for it was shopping. When you land on a product, Copilot can easily gather reviews, news articles, comparisons, and alternatives. It’s what you’d find in a normal search, but you don’t have to make a separate search.

Of course, the Chat tab is still present, as well. Microsoft’s Bing Chat has been skewed into submission after some unhinged responses, but the floodgates are slowly opening back up. You can use Bing Chat in Edge Copilot, including its new tone response types.

Microsoft is continuing to build on its AI strategy after a multi-billion investment in OpenAI, the research group behind ChatGPT, earlier this year. The company is scheduled to give a presentation on the future of AI in the workplace on March 16 where we expect to hear more about Bing Chat in Office apps, as well as the possibility of ChatGPT 4 providing AI-generated videos.

Editors' Recommendations

Google Bard avoids the critical flaws of Bing Chat
Google Bard responses on a screen.

When I heard that the Google Bard AI chatbot had finally launched, I had one thought: "Oh no." After all, my initial conversation with Bing Chat didn't go as I planned, with the AI claiming it was perfect, it wanted to be human, and arguing with me relentlessly.

To my surprise, Google looks like it will have the last laugh on this one. Bard is already more refined and useful than Bing Chat, bypassing the critical issues Microsoft stared down during Bing's public debut. There are still some problems, but Bard is off to a promising start.
Bye, emojis

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You can now try out Google’s Bard, the rival to ChatGPT
ChatGPT versus Google on smartphones.

Google has just announced the launch of its conversational AI, Bard. Bard is Google's response to the ever-popular ChatGPT, now in use by Microsoft in its own products.

The tech giant rushed to release Bard, and it is now ready for testing. Google is inviting users to test the AI, but as it notes, it might make mistakes.

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Nvidia built a massive dual GPU to power models like ChatGPT
Nvidia's H100 NVL being installed in a server.

Nvidia's semi-annual GPU Technology Conference (GTC) usually focuses on advancements in AI, but this year, Nvidia is responding to the massive rise of ChatGPT with a slate of new GPUs. Chief among them is the H100 NVL, which stitches two of Nvidia's H100 GPUs together to deploy Large Language Models (LLM) like ChatGPT.

The H100 isn't a new GPU. Nvidia announced it a year ago at GTC, sporting its Hopper architecture and promising to speed up AI inference in a variety of tasks. The new NVL model with its massive 94GB of memory is said to work best when deploying LLMs at scale, offering up to 12 times faster inference compared to last-gen's A100.

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