Microsoft pushed Cortana out of the picture across its services, relegating the virtual assistant to a behind the scenes role on Windows 10. That means the Bing search engine has been missing an AI assistant integration. Microsoft is now aiming to plug that gap with an assistant bot that will borrow a lot of functionality from Cortana.
Imaginatively titled “Chat” by the boffins at Microsoft, the new tool runs on an experimental AI model. It will communicate on top of Bing, in much the same way Google Assistant can on Google Search.
Bing Bots themselves are hardly a new concept, using them to help search results since 2017. However, this new Chat AI takes the idea a step further, running on Microsoft Bot Framework to assist users directly during searches.
Tested by WindowsLatest and apparently seen at Build 2021 last week, the bot can be summoned through a new “Chat” icon next to the search button. The bot is capable of providing information on Windows 10, casual conversation responses, and recommend products across groups and price ranges.
Features
If you just want to engage in a conversation, the bot is good at just general chit chat. However, as this is a new in-development solution, the small talk does have a limit and the bot will repeat certain answers. We expect this chit chat ability to get fleshed out in the future.
Of course, you can also use it to provide direct information on searches. It is worth noting Microsoft has not yet officially announced the Chat bot, but we expect it to arrive on Windows 10 Sun Valley (21H2).
Tip of the day: Do you know that Windows 10 allows creating PDFs from basically any app with printing support? In our tutorial, we show you how this works via Microsoft Print to PDF and Bullzip PDF Printer to save a PDF from any app, even with advanced options like adjusted quality, multi-page printing, and password protection.
