Bing's Waitlist Removal: Climax Of Creativity, Innovation

In early February, Microsoft unveiled the new Bing with a chat feature powered by a next-generation version of OpenAI's large language model in the GPT-3 and -3.5 series, making it "more powerful than ChatGPT," according to Microsoft. From the moment of that launch, Microsoft Bing became an instant hit, attracting millions of people who didn't mind flooding the waitlist.

Back then, according to Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft corporate vice president, and consumer chief marketing officer, "multiple millions," have already joined the waitlist -- up from just over a million two days after launch.

This interest is due to ChatGPT's immense popularity, making it one of the fastest-growing apps of all time, because of its ability to code, write, chat and so much more. 

However, between February and now, Microsoft’s Bing appears to be enjoying the spotlight for the first time in a decade after its release of a GPT-powered interface last month.

But the tech giant has so far been cautious about the pace at which it is making the new Bing offering — powered by  OpenAI’s GPT-4 tech — available to users.

As it appears now, Bing is bringing those walls down.

Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI, appears to have lifted the waitlist from the new Bing, ostensibly allowing anyone to gain instant access to the new experience.

Windows Central, which first spotted this change, said users don’t have to wait to try out the new Bing anymore.

Testing this feature with a few email IDs (both new and old) and getting access instantly.

However, not all email IDs we tested got access instantly.

While the new Bing landing page still shows the typical “Join the Waitlist” button, you can sign in and get access instantly.

Microsoft is yet to issue a confirmatory statement on this development. Microsoft is holding an event called “reinvent productivity with AI” later Thursday at 11 am ET.

While today’s agenda is limited to introducing AI-powered tools for Microsoft 356 (Office) and Dynamic 365 — the company’s Salesforce competitor — it won’t be surprising if there is an announcement related to Bing as well.

The Seattle-based company is racing to integrate the AI-powered chatbot into many of its services. Last month, Microsoft introduced the GPT-4 powered bot to Windows 11’s taskbar.

Earlier this week, Edge browser’s stable version got the Bing AI chatbot feature.

The OpenAI’s tech is proving to be a hit for Bing, which recently reported reaching 100 million daily active users.

This is expected given the hype around AI-powered chatbots and how it has attracted tens of millions of users who wish to give it a whirl.

After people were able to “jailbreak” the chatbot into saying problematic things, Microsoft started testing various restrictions on the conversations.

Earlier this week it raised the limit to 15 turns in a conversation and 150 messages per day.

Conclusion

Microsoft has clearly demonstrated unflinching creativity and innovation based on its synergy with OpenAI.

With this trend, Microsft Bing has drawn a competition battle line with search engine giant, Google.

It is not clear yet how things may swing.

This latest of Microsoft's creativity and innovation may yet become another albatross to Google's leadership claims over search engine exploits.