Yes, Microsoft overlays a generative pre-trained transformer model in its Bing Chat already, but the company is looking to give users the ability to abstract its branded layer and dig into the guts of the latest model more directly on mobile devices.
A report from Windows Latest details the change some users on Android and iOS may start seeing in the coming days that allow them to toggle between the Bing Chat options of conversation styles and that of interacting with GPT-4 directly.
GPT-4 is the latest and much broader multimodal language model developed by Microsoft’s partner OpenAI which the company claims “can solve difficult problems with greater accuracy, thanks to its broader general knowledge and problem-solving abilities.”
While it might feel like a no-brainier to toggle GPT-4 in most instances, Microsoft’s abstraction layer in Bing Chat does a bit of curating of accuracy, security, and attribution for both the user and the sourced information, that the uncurated GPT-4 does not.
Microsoft has already warned that users should be aware when using engaging with GPT-4 it “is not perfect and may make mistakes or produce inappropriate responses. If you encounter any issues or have any feedback, please let us know by using the feedback button on the chat interface.”
The feature should be hitting devices in the coming days and will be presented as an update to the app via its respective app stores.
In addition to adding access to GPT-4, Bing Chat will also be gaining some offline support for prompts and queries designed to address its upcoming envelopment in Microsoft’s Windows 11 and beyond.
As Microsoft gears up to push Windows Copilot in a big way, users have complained that it’s taking Copilot too long to respond to simple questions as it scours the internet for an answer. To address the speed issue, Microsoft is producing a “No Search” mode which will accelerate Bing Chat and Copilot’s response times by predefined scripts for items such as common operating system commands and settings locations.
There is no word if and when “No Search Mode” will hit Microsoft’s AI-driven platforms but with an event scheduled next month to go over possible new hardware running the latest OS, the company may inclined to talk about this development in fuller details, at that point.
