Microsoft revamps Bing search engine with AI

REDMOND, Wash. - Microsoft Corp is revamping its Bing search engine with artificial intelligence, one of its biggest efforts yet to lead a new wave of technology and reshape how people gather information.

Microsoft is investing billions of dollars in AI to secure its future. The company is working with OpenAI to rival Alphabet Inc., and possibly claim huge profits from tools that speed up all manner of content creation, automating tasks and even automating jobs themselves.

This technology is going to reshape pretty much every software category, said Satya Nadella, Microsoft's chief executive, in a briefing at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

In the afternoon, Microsoft shares increased by 3.6% to $266.02 a share.

The power of so-called generative AI that can create virtually any text or image was first introduced to the public last year with the release of ChatGPT, the chatbot sensation from OpenAI. Its human-like responses to any prompt have given people new ways to think about the possibilities of marketing, writing term papers or disseminating news, or even how to query information online.

Microsoft is aiming to market OpenAI's technology, including ChatGPT, to its cloud customers, and add the same power to its suite of products, including search.

Google has taken note. On Monday it unveiled a chatbot of its own called Bard, while it plans to release AI for its search engine that can synthesize material when no simple answer exists online.

Daniel Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities, said that the rivalry in search is now among the industry's biggest, as OpenAI sets up Microsoft to expand its 9% share at Google's expense.

Microsoft is looking to win this AI battle, according to a research note on Monday.

For the quarter ending December 31, Alphabet reported $42.6 billion in Google Search and other revenue, while Microsoft posted $3.2 billion in search and news advertising.

Microsoft has a plan to invest in supercomputer development and cloud support in order to release more sophisticated technology and aim at the level of machine intelligence dreamed up in science fiction.

The fruit of this work is more immediate. Last week Microsoft announced that it would generate meeting notes in Teams, its collaboration software, and suggest email replies to vendors using its Viva Sales subscription.