Yusuf Mehdi – Corporate Vice President & Consumer Chief Marketing Officer
Two weeks ago, we introduced the world to the all new AI-powered Bing and Microsoft Edge — your copilot for the web. Since then, based on strong and positive product feedback and engagement, we’ve welcomed more than one million people in 169 countries off the waitlist into the preview. We continue to expand the preview to more people every day. Our preview community is actively using the breadth of new features across Search, Answers, Chat and Creation with total engagement up significantly. Feedback on the new capabilities is positive, with 71% of testers giving the new Bing a “thumbs up” on the new search and answers capabilities. We’re even more excited about the breadth of feedback we are receiving on where and how we can improve and we are acting on it with regular updates.
We’re seeing some interesting use cases and queries in preview testing. I recently learned about a father showing his son the new Bing, and together they discovered and created in a way not easily done with today’s search engines. They started off by creating sci-fi stories using simple prompts in chat, eventually leading to the development of a video game idea where Bing not only helped create a plot, but also generated the code to input directly into Scratch – a visual programming tool. In just a few queries, they captured the wonder and potential of the new Bing and Edge. We are hearing many similar stories on how the new Bing is helping people discover and create in ways previously not possible.
Sign up for the new Bing and Edge mobile apps
In this spirit of learning and continuing to build new capabilities, we’re excited to share today the preview release of the new Bing and Edge mobile apps. We’re beginning to roll out the incredible capabilities of the new Bing and Edge on your smartphone along with some exciting new features, such as voice input. In addition, we are creating a new chat experience, beginning with Skype, to enhance your social communications with your friends and family.
The new Bing and Edge goes mobile; Now introducing voice access
Because we know 64% of searches occur on mobile phones, we are releasing all new Bing and Edge mobile apps to serve as your copilot for the web even when you are away from your desktop.
Imagine an unexpected layover in a new city. As you plan a quick afternoon stop in Tokyo, you ask Bing to help find a place to store your luggage. It then provides tips for navigating the metro system on your way to the famed Shinjuku station. With a few hours to explore, Bing creates a short itinerary, helping you get the most out of your quick visit, and even translates along the way.
Available on iOS and Android today, the Bing mobile app offers a fresh look and experience. Tapping the Bing icon at the bottom will invoke a chat session, where you can engage in all the same ways you can from the desktop. Ask simple or complex questions and receive answers and citations. Choose how you want your answers displayed – bullet points, text or simplified responses. Explore the Bing chat experience to refine your query or compose an email, poem or list.
With the introduction of the new Bing mobile app, we’re adding one of the preview community’s most requested features – voice. Available on mobile and on desktop, voice search provides more versatility in how you can deliver prompts and receive answers from Bing.
In addition, those who have access to the preview will be able to utilize the new Bing experience from the homepage of the Microsoft Edge mobile app.
Bing goes social with Skype
To better assist you when you are collaborating with friends and family, we are introducing AI-powered Bing for Skype. More than 36 million people use Skype daily to connect through phone calls and chats across borders and around the world and the new Bing is going to enable some helpful and fun new scenarios and capabilities.
Imagine having a copilot for your friends and family as you stay connected and plan your next get together. Simply add Bing to the group, as you would any Skype contact, and now you can ask Bing to answer questions and provide information for the entire group. For example, if your family is chatting about the next family reunion, you can simply ask Bing for suggestions on travel destinations, expected weather forecasts and interesting events around your time of travel, and everyone in the chat will get access to the results. When you are catching up with friends, you can ask Bing to simply fetch information from the web, for example, the latest news or last night’s award shows to add to your conversation.
You can choose how you want your answers to be displayed – bullet points, text or a simplified response. Bing can accommodate your preferences. Fluent in more than 100 languages, and capable of translating between them, Bing can offer unique value to this global communications tool.
Available worldwide in preview today, the new Bing in Skype can provide helpful, real-time answers to all your questions. As we learn and fine-tune this amazing new capability, we envision bringing it to other communications apps, like Teams, in the future.
If you’re currently on the Bing preview experience, these features are available to you later today. In the first few days of testing these mobile experiences, you may occasionally find connectivity issues in low-bandwidth situations. We’re aware of the issue and are working on a fix.
If you’re among those awaiting access, we appreciate both your patience and your excitement. We’re working as fast as possible to onboard more people every day. If you’re interested in trying it for yourself, please sign up for the Bing preview today. We hope you enjoy the new capabilities and please keep the feedback coming so we can continue to improve the product for you.
*Skype user interface will vary during initial rollout.
Tags: AI, Bing, Microsoft Edge, skype
Yusuf Mehdi
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