Over 1 million people sign up for Bing with ChatGPT in 48 hours: Microsoft

More than 1 million people signed up on the waitlist to try out the new Bing Search with an integrated ChatGPT functionality in just 48 hours, Microsoft has announced.

OpenAI's ChatGPT had itself attracted one million users in one week.

"We're humbled and energized by the number of people who want to test-drive the new AI-powered Bing! In 48 hours, more than 1 million people have joined the waitlist for our preview," tweeted Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president and consumer chief marketing officer at Microsoft.



Mehdi and Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella announced the new Bing last week which is still in limited preview to some users.

Microsoft introduced its new Bing powered by "next-generation" ChatGPT artificial intelligence (AI), and also updated its Edge browser with new AI capabilities.

The AI-powered Bing search engine and Edge browser are now available for preview at Bing.com, to "deliver better search, more complete answers, a new chat experience and the ability to generate content", the tech giant said.

According to the company, these tools act as an "AI copilot for the web".

"AI will fundamentally change every software category, starting with the largest category of all -- search," said Nadella.

With the new Bing, users get an enhanced version of the standard search experience. The updated search engine is powered by next-generation OpenAI large language model that is more powerful than ChatGPT.

It offers more relevant results for common queries like sports scores, stock prices and weather, as well as a new sidebar that displays additional in-depth information if users need it.

Microsoft also announced that it has updated the Edge browser with new AI capabilities and a new look.

Google's Bard

Alphabet’s shares tanked more than 9% on February 10, wiping off $100 billion off of its market cap, after a report emerged pointing to a factual error made by its newly launched AI chatbot Bard.

The company posted a GIF of its new AI Bard in action which showed the chatbot giving a factually inaccurate response to a prompt.

In the GIF, the chatbot is prompted, "What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can I tell my 9-year old about?"

Bard responded with a number of answers, including one suggesting the JWST was used to take the very first pictures of a planet outside the Earth's solar system, or exoplanets.

This is where it went wrong as the first pictures of exoplanets were, however, taken by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in 2004, as confirmed by NASA.