Highlights:
- Mehdi said that Microsoft is looking into adding an “expanded hover experience” to that part of the interface.
- The GPT-4 model that OpenAI LP showed off earlier this month is used to power Bing Chat, but it has been changed to work better with Bing Chat.
Microsoft Corp. has confirmed that it plans to put ads into Bing Chat to make money.
In a blog post on Wednesday, Yusuf Mehdi, the corporate vice president of Microsoft’s modern life, search, and devices group, said that the company is “looking into putting ads in chat”. The executive also said that publishers would get a share of the money made from these ads.
Last month, Reuters said that Microsoft had talked with a “major advertising agency” about putting ads in Bing Chat. The content being promoted could come in different forms. Microsoft has reportedly tested paid links below Bing Chat answers and a second ad format that targets consumers when they look for a product or service.
It’s been said that some Bing Chat users have already seen ads in the service’s interface.
When a user types in a question, the service usually responds with more than one sentence. After each sentence, Bing Chat links to the page from which it got the information. Some users have said that these reference shortcuts are sometimes replaced with icons that say “Ad” and have a paid link.
When Mehdi confirmed the ad feature, he also said that the company is looking into alternate ways to promote publishers’ content in Bing Chat.
Bing Chat’s response to any search query lists a few links to the original source of information. Mehdi said that Microsoft is looking into adding an “expanded hover experience” to that part of the interface. Bing Chat automatically shows related links when a user hovers over a website link.
Mehdi says adding a new Microsoft Start panel to the Bing Chat interface is another idea. Microsoft Start is an app that lets users get news from several publishers. The company could add a panel to Bing Chat that would display content from the app with responses to search queries.
Mehdi wrote, “The early progress is encouraging. Based on our data from the preview, we are driving more traffic from all types of users. We have brought more people to Bing/Edge for new scenarios like chat and we are seeing increased usage. Then, we have uniquely implemented ways to drive traffic to publishers including citations within the body of the chat answers.”
The GPT-4 model that OpenAI LP showed off earlier this month is used to power Bing Chat, but it has been changed to work better with Bing Chat. The service also uses Prometheus, a second neural network made by Microsoft. The second system makes the citations that Bing Chat includes in its answers.
Microsoft has changed Bing Chat since it was first released a month ago. The chatbot can give answers that are fair, accurate, or creative. Microsoft put out an update two weeks ago that lets users ask more questions in one chat session and speeds up the balanced answer mode in Bing Chat.
