Microsoft feels threatened by the sudden release of a ChatGPT rival in the “Search” battle with Google

Microsoft will host a major press conference today, February 7th. Last week, the software giant sent out invitations to a live event at the company’s headquarters in Redmond. Just as Google announced its ChatGPT competitor, the company is making the event official.

The event will begin promptly at 10AM PT / 19:00 WAT on February 7th, and Microsoft isn’t giving away too much information in the lead-up. The company is more likely to concentrate on its rumoured ChatGPT integration into Bing and its extended partnership with OpenAI.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is expected to “share some progress on a few exciting projects,” implying a slew of major announcements.

Microsoft recently extended its partnership with OpenAI in a $10 billion deal, making Microsoft OpenAI’s exclusive cloud partner. The invitation comes just days after the deal was announced. All of OpenAI’s workloads, which include products, API services, and research, will be powered by cloud services provided by Microsoft.

Google just announced Bard, a competitor to ChatGPT, so Microsoft’s announcement couldn’t have come at a better time. While Google’s “experimental conversational AI service” is currently only available to a select group of beta testers, the company has promised to make it more widely available in the near future.

Microsoft’s answer to Google’s ChatGPT competitor will be to add ChatGPT to Bing search results. Last week, some Bing users reported seeing a new chat section with a chatbot-like UI for getting results from Microsoft’s search engine. This integration appears to have briefly leaked. The “new Bing,” as Microsoft calls it, will give users “complete answers” to their questions.

The Software giant intends to use OpenAI’s models in upcoming iterations of both consumer and business offerings. Innovation Village, in a report, noted that OpenAI tech will be implemented in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook as well, not just Bing. Microsoft has just released Microsoft Teams Premium with OpenAI-powered features.

The Microsoft event will take place on February 7th, a day before Google’s event on the same topics (search and AI). Evidently, Google is very worried about ChatGPT’s recent launch, as evidenced by the search giant’s hasty announcement of Bard a day before Microsoft’s event.

We’re crossing our fingers that Microsoft reveals more of its plans for incorporating OpenAI models into its products today, including deeper ChatGPT integration in Bing.