Microsoft CEO sees AI as new way to win search battle

With Microsoft Corp. adding artificial intelligence technology from OpenAI to its Bing search engine, Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella sees another opportunity to challenge Google’s dominance.

It’s been a long time coming for the 55-year-old executive. Nadella oversaw engineering when Microsoft was building Bing in the mid-2000s, when the company was struggling to win market share. This time around, Google’s advantage as the incumbent will matter less, Nadella said Tuesday.

The Microsoft AI model for search — called Prometheus and built on some of the same technology OpenAI used for the viral ChatGPT chatbot — will allow it to make the biggest leap ever in the relevance of search results, he said. The new Bing adds the ability to chat and can even help users compose emails and other content.

But Google isn’t standing still. The company said Monday that its own conversational AI service, Bard, is opening up to trusted testers — and that Google is readying the platform for the public “in the coming weeks.”

“The entire search category is now going through a sea change,” Nadella said in an interview with Bloomberg. “That opportunity comes very few times.” Moneycontrol