Bing previews its answer to Google’s AI Overviews

Microsoft this afternoon previewed its answer to Google’s AI-powered search experience: Bing generative search.

Available only for a “small percentage” of users at the moment, Bing generative search, powered by a combination of large and small generative AI models (mum’s the word on which, exactly), aggregates info from around the web and generates a summary in response to search queries.

For example, if a user searches “What is a spaghetti western?,” Bing generative search shows information about the subgenre’s history and origin and top examples, along with links and sources that show where that information came from. As with Google’s comparable AI Overviews feature, there’s an option to dismiss AI-generated summaries for traditional search results from the same page.

“This is another important step in evolving the search experience on Bing and we’re eager to get feedback throughout this journey,” Microsoft writes in a post on its official blog. “We are slowly rolling this out and will take our time, garner feedback, test and learn and work to create a great experience before making this more broadly available … We look forward to sharing more updates in the coming months.”

Microsoft insists that Bing generative search, which evolves the AI-generated chat answers it launched on Bing in February, “fulfill[s] the intent of the user’s query more effectively.” But much has been written about AI-generated overviews gone wrong.

Google’s AI Overviews infamously suggested putting glue on a pizza. Arc Search told one reporter that cut-off toes will eventually grow back. And Perplexity ripped off articles written by outlets including CNBC, Bloomberg and Forbes without giving credit or attribution.

AI-generated overviews threaten to cannibalize traffic to the sites from which they source their info. Indeed, they already are, with one study finding that AI Overviews could negatively affect about 25% of publisher traffic due to the de-emphasis of web page links.

For its part, Microsoft insists that it’s “maintaining the number of clicks to websites” and “look[ing] closely a how generative search impacts traffic to publishers.” The company volunteers no stats to back this up, however, alluding only to “early data” that it’s choosing to keep private for the time being.

That doesn’t instill a ton of confidence.