Microsoft is adding AI-powered summaries to Bing search results

The race to bring more AI capabilities to search is on, with Microsoft moving forward with additional tools for Bing. Today, the company began previews of Bing’s generative search, where the top result of a user’s query will be an original answer compiled by AI.

O about Bing Generative Search showed some sample results. In addition to the overview statement, Microsoft will provide links to the main sources that the Large Language Models and the Small Language Models used to create their answers. It will also have a related information section. For example, with the example query “how long do elephants live”, the main summary is followed by videos with information about factors that affect elephant longevity. After the results are generated, the usual list of search results will be displayed.

If you’re curious and want to try generative search right away, you might be out of luck. This is not yet an opt-in option for Bing users and is only being applied to “a small percentage of user queries” at this stage. “We are rolling this out slowly and will take our time, collecting feedback, testing and learning, and working to create a great experience before making it more widely available,” Microsoft said.

Google released a similar tool earlier this year called in an effort to retain users who can go directly to an AI chatbot to get answers to their questions. AI Overview had , so it will be interesting to see how the Microsoft equivalent performs in comparison. And while Microsoft emphasized in the blog post that it developed generative search without the intention of ruining web publishers’ businesses, it’s worth repeating that this type of AI tool is .