Microsoft Bing is trying a new layout that fills your search results page with AI-generated information.
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Bing’s new search experience puts AI-generated answers front and center while pushing traditional search results to the side. The new layout, which is rolling out for a small number of queries, fills your search results page with AI-generated summaries addressing various aspects of your question.
Microsoft has shared an early look at what this search experience will look like… and it’s a lot. For the query “What is a spaghetti western?” Bing displays a summary explaining that it’s a “subgenre of western films produced by Italian filmmakers,” along with a series of bullet points of the genre’s key characteristics.
I know that this feature isn’t fully rolled out yet, but as a Bing and Edge user (we exist!), I hope it’s either opt-in or comes with an off switch. Cutting off search descriptions after two lines is especially troublesome and would make it more difficult for me to peruse through the first page of actual search results.
Google has a similar feature called AI Overviews, which takes over the top of the search results page with AI-generated summaries. Shortly after its rollout, users found that the feature delivered inaccurate answers for certain queries, forcing Google to manually some of its responses.
But Bing’s new layout goes beyond general summaries. With the query about spaghetti westerns, you’ll see a blurb about the genre’s history and origins after scrolling past the initial answer, along with related videos, a chart with the best and most influential movies, and even details on music. That’s a lot of information for a single page, some of which you might not even need. Microsoft lists its sources beneath each section, while all the links you’d normally click on appear in a thin column on the right side of the screen.
As noted by Microsoft, the new experience combines Bing search with large and small language models. “It understands the search query, reviews millions of sources of information, dynamically matches content, and generates search results in a new AI-generated layout to fulfill the intent of the user’s query more effectively,” the company says.
Microsoft is also taking the potential impact on search traffic into account. It says early data suggests it “maintains the number of clicks to websites and supports a healthy web ecosystem.”
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