Microsoft continues to actively implement artificial intelligence in the software products of its proprietary ecosystem. In early February, an ambitious chat bot based on the generative language models ChatGPT and GPT-3.5 from OpenAI was launched as part of the updated Bing search engine, after which it was also announced for the Edge browser and their mobile applications. Now the solution is in Skype, the super-popular calling and video conferencing service, which currently has 300 million monthly users, or 4 billion in total. Public testing in the Skype interface starts worldwide from today, February 22.
The Bing chatbot is presented as a separate tool for Skype group chats, that is, it is available to be added to any group at will, just like a regular contact. With AI as an internal assistant, Microsoft says it “opens up useful and fun communication scenarios” and will also make it much easier to schedule shared tasks and events. For example, for a query about a family trip, Bing will collect travel destinations, weather forecast, and interesting events along the way, and each participant will be able to see the results. Of course, more ordinary things are also available: without leaving the chat, you can find out the latest news, the schedule of episodes of a new series or the latest film releases.
It is noteworthy that the structure of the responses from the Bing chatbot is being edited. The user is offered three options depending on the convenience of issuing: a bulleted list, a general text, or a simplified, short answer. The technology already supports more than 100 languages.
When referring to AI, it is enough to mention @Bing in the question message. In the future, similar capabilities will be added to the Teams corporate messenger.
