Microsoft is rolling out perhaps the biggest upgrade to SwiftKey ever, with the integration of Bing Chat bringing the powerful AI search bot to the popular virtual keyboard. However, users who may want to ask support questions about the integration will not be able to. Microsoft has now decided to close the official SwiftKey support forums.
Not only have the forums closed but they have also been deleted entirely from Microsoft’s community support website. That means you cannot even go through previous threads/posts to find information about the keyboard.
SamMobile reports the support site still has specific topic questions and answers, including how to access and use the Bing Chat features, but it appears that the more freeform community forums are offline. There is no word on why these forums were removed or when they will be restored. It seems like a strange coincidence that the site went down just as Microsoft started rolling out the new Bing Chat features.
SwiftKey users who need help or want to provide feedback may have to resort to other channels, such as Microsoft’s SwiftKey Twitter account, although that doesn’t appear to have received too many recent updates either. Alternatively, they can use the in-app feedback option or contact Microsoft via email.
Bing Chat Now in Swiftkey
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella promised in January that AI will become a part of all the company’s services. We have already seen how that plays out across major products such as Office (Microsoft 365 Copilot), Bing (Bing Chat and Bing Image Creator), Microsoft Cloud (Azure OpenAI Service), CRM/ERP (Dynamics 365 Copilot), and programming (GitHub Copilot X).
However, Nadella’s commitment is even hitting smaller services, such as SwiftKey Beta. Bing Chat, which is powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 model, aims to provide users with more personalized and relevant search results by generating natural language responses based on their queries. Microsoft’s integration of GPT-4 into Bing Chat last month brought multimodal capabilities.
On SwiftKey, the AI is available via a Bing icon on the top left corner of the keyboard. Tapping on it will open a chat window where users can type or speak to Bing.
Bing Chat in SwiftKey has two modes: chat and tone. In chat mode, users can have a natural conversation with Bing, similar to using the Bing mobile app or website. Bing can answer queries, provide facts, generate content, and offer suggestions for the next user turn.
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