Microsoft adds generative search to its Bing engine

Microsoft is adding generative search to Bing despite the search engine's market share showing no increase after prior AI tech additions.

The technology, currently being rolled out to a small percentage of Bing users, bears a striking resemblance to Google's AI Overviews. It builds summaries in response to search queries rather than just a straightforward results list.

Microsoft gave the example of a user searching for "What is a spaghetti western?" to which Bing would serve up an AI-generated block of text about the film genre, its history, origins, along with examples.

Redmond added: "The regular search results continue to be prominently displayed on the page like always."

It's a tricky thing to implement, not least because of the controversy surrounding clickthrough rates and AI-generated summaries. For its part, Google said: "We see that the links included in AI Overviews get more clicks than if the page had appeared as a traditional web listing for that query," in its announcement. However, other observers have described the potential impact of the technology on publisher visibility as "devastating."

"Early data indicates that this experience maintains the number of clicks to websites and supports a healthy web ecosystem," Microsoft added.

"The generative search experience is designed with this in mind, including retaining traditional search results and increasing the number of clickable links, like the references in the results."

Google's AI Overviews has also produced some frankly arresting results as it graduated from an optional experimental feature to something more mainstream. One infamous example was adding glue to pizza to make cheese stick, or consuming a rock daily. It was enough to make Liz Reid, VP and Head of Google Search, post an explanatory blog assuring users it had worked "to address these issues, either through improvements to our algorithms or through established processes to remove responses that don't comply with our policies."

Microsoft is taking a cautious approach to generative search in Bing. "We are slowly rolling this out and will take our time, garner feedback, test and learn, and work to create a great experience before making this more broadly available."

A glance at Statcounter's figures on search engine market share indicates that Bing still has a mountain to climb when it comes to rivaling Google's dominance. Google accounted for 91.05 percent of the market, while Bing stood at 3.74 percent.

For fun, we asked Microsoft Copilot how it would make Bing more popular. Oddly, its top recommendation was: "Ensure accurate and relevant search results." ®