Microsoft intends to integrate the AI chatbot ChatGPT into its Bing search engine. Some Bing users reported being able to use a new AI-powered version of the search engine for a brief period of time. Shortly later, this was turned off.

One of them was student and designer Owen Yin, who spoke about this to the media. Yin told The Verge that he saw the new Bing when he set the search engine as the homepage in Microsoft’s Edge browser. Yin was able to try out the system briefly and provided further details on the integration in a blog post on Medium.

The new Bing is claimed to have ChatGPT features and will allow users to enter up to 1,000 characters in the search field. The current version of ChatGPT only gives access to data up to 2021, while this new version appears to allow access to more recent data.

The new Bing will be built on OpenAI’s GPT-4 large-scale language model, giving faster access and more thorough, natural replies. ChatGPT will analyse the user’s questions and do relevant searches, summarising the results in summary. The Bing citation source will be presented after the response, allowing users to double-check the information’s correctness.

ChatGPT will be able to ask follow-up questions, produce documents, and answer questions. The toolbar lets the user switch between old and new versions of Bing. The new Bing will be accessed by clicking on the “Chats” button and will initially be available to those who have been allowed access by joining a waiting list at bing.com/new.

The release date of the new Bing with ChatGPT has not yet been confirmed, although it is expected to be available shortly as Microsoft recently extended partnership with OpenAI may speed up the process.

In addition to Yin, at least two other Twitter users have independently tried the new Bing and posted screenshots.