Microsoft is looking to make a comeback and it’s planning to do so in grand fashion – this year, Microsoft plans to integrate ChatGPT into its search engine, thus enabling users to make conversational searches whenever they want to look something up online. As good as Google is, this could help Microsoft’s Bing gain a more favorable position in the whole search engine arms race.
Bing-GPT
The AI shift is expected to make an even bigger impact this year, with ChatGPT quickly becoming the trend’s poster child, given its ability to answer complex queries and provide follow-up questions, as if you were talking to an actual person. ChatGPT was trained by OpenAI using an expanded version of the model that its InstructGPT used, allowing ChatGPT to pull from any existing text and source that it was fed, supplying users with comprehensive answers to questions like ‘What’s the best place to go to for Summer?’
ChatGPT seems to circle around providing strong customer support, making it an appealing draw for search engines. Microsoft, being an investor in both ChatGPT and OpenAI, is the first to make a move in trying to integrate the tool. Google is also eyeing its options and has been developing its own AI models for years. However, Google says that it’s not planning to integrate conversational AI just yet due to the potential of ‘Reputational Risk’, given how ChatGPT, while being mostly accurate, still has shortcomings and can potentially amplify certain inaccuracies and biases.
The flaws of ChatGPT are, of course, still being ironed out, and the more people use it, the more of these errors get corrected over time. ChatGPT also can’t connect to the internet, so its knowledge base is limited, depending on when its system was last updated. Shifting to an entirely new mode of search could also be detrimental to Google’s current business model, hence the company’s hesitation to buy into the bandwagon.
ChatGPT’s conversational nature, while providing a better customer experience, does take away from a search provider’s web traffic, given how you’ll no longer be required to head to websites or conduct exhaustive research because the tool would present you with the list of all viable answers. It can be extremely handy, but without referral links, ChatGPT is really the only site that benefits from each interaction.
There are plenty of opportunities, but also a considerable amount of risks. How would you even effectively monetize ChatGPT if ever it were to become the new search standard? If all search engines switched to the tool, then that could force a significant change in search engine revenue models and SEO processes – Google ranking, site indexing, and all of that good stuff would essentially be voided if ChatGPT were to take over.
The Wrap
Economically speaking, ChatGPT, based on how it functions and its nature as a tool, offers big search companies more to lose rather than gain. The system would force a major change in thinking around SEO, not to mention the huge drop it would cause in your website traffic. There are some pretty hefty implications here and it’ll be interesting to see just how Microsoft plans to integrate ChatGPT into Bing. If it turns out well, then Google might have to pick up the slack and start chugging even harder.
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