A recap of Microsoft's event, where the company detailed the new Bing and Edge powered by OpenAI's next-gen model, AI progress, OpenAI partnership, and more
The VergeTom Warren
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft’s event turns a long-running Bing effort—visible in its earlier conversational-search update—into a more consequential product bet by putting OpenAI’s next-generation model and Microsoft’s Prometheus model into Bing and Edge. The accompanying limited preview of the new Bing makes the announcement an operational launch rather than only an AI research showcase.
The next day’s discussion of Microsoft’s OpenAI partnership explicitly framed search as a competitive product arena. That matters because Bing and Edge give Microsoft an established consumer distribution surface for the partnership’s models.
First-order effects
Microsoft makes Bing and Edge the immediate consumer-facing outlets for its OpenAI partnership, with the new Bing available in limited preview.
OpenAI’s next-generation model is integrated into Microsoft’s search and browser products, tying the partnership to a visible web-search use case.
Second-order effects
Google faces a more direct challenge in search product design, as Microsoft positions AI-assisted responses alongside its existing Bing and Edge distribution.
Microsoft’s later effort to reduce the cost of Bing Chat shows that operating AI search shifts pressure from model capability alone to the economics of serving the feature at scale.
Third-order effects
If Microsoft can sustain the integration economically, search competition increasingly centers on who controls both the model partnership and the consumer interface, rather than on traditional search ranking alone.
The reported work on an OpenAI web search product partly powered by Bing points to a more intertwined search stack, in which model developers and search platforms can be both partners and potential product rivals.
The trend: Consumer search is evolving into an AI-assisted interface battle, with model access, inference costs, and browser distribution becoming linked sources of advantage.
Microsoft has just announced a surprise in-person event tomorrow where it's expected to announce and demo its Bing ChatGPT integration and more 👀 https://www.theverge.com/...
OK Bing + ChatGPT is awesome. Some of the example questions they've showed in demo: 1. Will specific Ikea furniture fit into my 2019 Honda Odyssey 2. Sub ingredients on a recipe 4. Complex itinerary planning 5. Edge can do QA on a page https://www.theverge.com/...
Well that's pretty cool -> Via @tomwarren “The chat interface we just saw in Bing is available as a sidebar in Edge, so you can use it without having to navigate to Bing.” https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Via @tomwarren “This all feels similar to ChatGPT in this Bing chat interface, but w/added sources & feedback buttons. It feels less copilot & way more full on chatbot, & the sources are just domains w/no real indication what you're going to navigate to” https://www.theverge.com/…
Yep, via @reckless: “Gosh, I have a million questions about how sourcing, monetization, and revenue sharing will work with all of this.” https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Microsoft head of responsible AI acknowledges that OpenAI-Bing will occasionally “hallucinate” + give answers not grounded in search results (or reality). “Users will definitely see places where it's changing maybe, a small number...” or “variations” in people's biographies.
I asked @yusuf_i_mehdi why not rebranding #Bing snd he said they love the Bing brand and this moment is really about showing transformation not a turning page #Microsoft #ChatGPT https://twitter.com/...