It is hard to deny that Google killed it during their IO conference earlier this month. They were clearly kicked into action by AI developments spearheaded by Microsoft and OpenAI and it showed.
Well, Microsoft held their annual Build conference yesterday. How did they respond?
With a whimper.
Microsoft’s close partnership with OpenAI might be their smartest move in recent memory and they are squandering it with a complete lack of any coherent product vision.
Their big announcement was Copilot for Windows—a button on the Windows 11 taskbar that opens up what appears to be a Bing AI web view. Sure, Microsoft made sure to note that Copilot will be able to “customize the settings” on your PC although I am sure you will still get thrown into control panel if you need to accomplish anything substantial.
The only other notable announcement is that “Browsing with Bing” will soon be the default ChatGPT experience and that ChatGPT plugins will soon be compatible with Bing AI.
It isn’t a secret that Bing AI and ChatGPT share the same underlying model from OpenAI. And, unlike Google’s new generative AI augmented search, Microsoft didn’t put any thought into what a meaningful user experience for an AI assisted Bing would look like.
It is just a chat window, just like ChatGPT.
I don’t understand why I should want to use Bing AI instead. I don’t think Microsoft knows why, either.
So Build was boring. Maybe Satya is just happy to have made Google dance. But Google is running now. They haven’t caught up yet but the gap is quickly closing.