Microsoft opens its Bing chatbot to all, removing the waitlist, and announces features like image and video results, persistent chat and history, and plug-ins
Microsoft had already been iterating on response control through creative, balanced, and precise chat modes, following concerns about unpredictable outputs. This release shifts the product from a limited experiment toward a broadly available search interface with continuity and richer result formats.
The rollout also arrives alongside Microsoft's exploration of ads and publisher revenue sharing in Bing Chat, making the expanded interface consequential not only for users but for the economics of search referrals and answers.
First-order effects
Removing the waitlist makes Bing Chat available to a larger audience immediately, while persistent conversations and history make repeat use more practical.
Image and video results and plug-in support expand the product beyond text answers, giving Microsoft more ways to keep search activity inside the chat experience.
Second-order effects
Publishers, advertisers, and potential plug-in providers gain a stronger incentive to test how their content and services appear in conversational search, especially as Microsoft considers chat-based ad models.
Rival search and assistant products face pressure to pair generative answers with durable user context, multimodal results, and third-party extensions rather than offer one-off chat sessions.
Third-order effects
If these features become standard, search competition may increasingly center on the assistant as the interface that organizes discovery, transactions, and follow-up work—not only on ranking a results page.
That shift could make attribution and revenue-sharing arrangements with content providers more important, because answers and plug-ins can mediate users' path to source sites.
The trend: This is part of the move from standalone AI chat demos toward persistent, extensible assistant layers embedded in search.
Announcing the next wave of AI updates with Microsoft Bing & Edge! Includes: 🚀 Bing moves to Open Preview 🖼️ Video answers in chat 💬 Chat history ↗️ Export & share chats 🌏 Image creator in 100+ langs ➕ Support for 3rd party plugins 👉 https://blogs.microsoft.com/ ... #edtech #AI
I'm excited to share that Bing Chat is now in Open Preview. Thanks to those of you that joined us in this journey and provided feedback so that we could improve the product. Learn how we're continuing to transform search. https://blogs.microsoft.com/ ... https://twitter.com/...
Announcing the next generation of AI-powered Bing & Edge! New image & video answers, chat history, share & export, and coming soon multimodal and plugins support. https://blogs.microsoft.com/ ... https://twitter.com/...
1. Following ChatGPT's lead, Bing Chat will soon have plugins. Similar launch partners, too - OpenTable, WolframAlpha, etc. And if you're building a plugin, I suspect this means you'll also tap into the 100 million Bing DAUs. Soon: Microsoft 365 plugins? https://twitter.com/...
here's all the new AI-powered features that Microsoft just announced for Bing. There's a lot coming and Microsoft is announcing all of this a week before Google I/O https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Big Bing Chat news coming out of Microsoft this morning: - Third-party plugin support - Waitlist dropped - Rich visual upgrades for the chat interface - Chat history saved across sessions https://www.windowscentral.com/ ...
Microsoft is opening up its Bing chatbot to anyone today. That means you can sign in and use it across Bing and Edge with just a Microsoft Account https://www.theverge.com/...
Microsoft's Bing Chat is getting some huge upgrades soon: • images and videos in answers • persistent chat with a smart Edge feature • chat history • plug-ins with restaurant bookings and more full details here: https://www.theverge.com/...