AI search engines can now chat with us, but glitches abound

Microsoft employee Alex Buscher demonstrates a search feature integration of Microsoft Bing search engine and Edge browser with OpenAI on Tuesday, Feb 7, 2023, in Redmond. — AP

REDMOND, Washington: Nearly a quarter-century after Google’s search engine began to reshape how we use the Internet, big tech companies are racing to revamp a familiar web tool into a gateway to a new form of artificial intelligence.

If it seems like this week’s newly announced AI search chatbots – Google’s Bard, Baidu’s Ernie Bot and Microsoft’s Bing chatbot – are coming out of nowhere, well, even some of their makers seem to think so. The spark rushing them to market was the popularity of ChatGPT, launched late last year by Microsoft’s partner OpenAI and now helping to power a new version of the Bing search engine.