There are plans underway to bring Microsoft’s fully-fledged chatbot, Bing Chat to more users across multiple browsers aside from Edge. At the moment, the experience is exclusive to Edge users.
In March, Microsoft shipped the AI-powered tool to open preview for everyone to try out and even scrapped the Microsoft Account requirement to access it but with a cap.
And while Microsoft continues to push updates and improvements to the chatbot, its exclusiveness to the Edge browser can be a limiting factor. Especially, for users on other browsers that have no intention of transitioning to Microsoft Edge.
However, this might not be the case for long. Microsoft’s head of Advertising and Web Services, Mikhail Parakhin while responding to a question posed by Neowin’s John Callaham regarding Bing Chat’s update in June on Twitter disclosed that:
The largest change by far is a big internals refactoring in preparation for the large-scale plugin rollout. We are turning everything into a plugin (including different facets of Search!) – and it results in a very significant metrics improvement.
That actually is true. The largest change by far is a big internals refactoring in preparation for the large-scale plugin rollout. We are turning everything into a plugin (including different facets of Search!) – and it results in a very significant metrics improvement.
— Mikhail Parakhin (@MParakhin) May 30, 2023
While it’s unclear if 3rd party browser support will be part of this move to plugins, it is coming, said Parakhin:
Yep, coming
— Mikhail Parakhin (@MParakhin) May 30, 2023
Parakhin further stated:
In addition, larger context size for Balanced, big improvements in disengagement rate (especially for code writing), improvements in Bing Image Creator, hopefully first experiments in enabling third party browsers.
Admittedly, there are a couple of workarounds in place that one could use to get Bing Chat on Google Chrome or Firefox, but it wouldn’t work quite as well as it does on Edge.
Obviously, once Bing Chat support is available in third-party browsers, more users will be able to leverage its capabilities to enhance their browsing experience. It will also evidently provide users with a smooth and seamless experience compared to the already available workarounds.
It’ll be interesting to see how this update will affect Microsoft’s 100 million daily active users in Bing in the long run, and the competitive advantage it might have over Google’s AI chatbot, Bard that’s currently available in 180 countries without a waitlist. Perhaps, Bing Chat’s June update will feature the “first experiments in enabling third-party browsers.”
via Neowin
