What is Bing Chat, how does it work and how can you use it?
In this video, you’ll learn all that and more.
Hey friends!
I’m Tasia Custode and welcome back to my YouTube Channel where I share tech tips, app
reviews, and as of late, a lot of AI content.
This is like the year of AI, isn’t it?
I’ve talked a lot about ChatGPT and Bard, but there’s another chatbot causing quite
a stir: Bing Chat.
So, let’s dive inside Bing Chat.
Let’s go!
So what is Bing Chat?
Bing Chat is an AI assistant, that’s built on a large language model developed by OpenAI.
And if that sounds familiar, that’s because it is - OpenAI is the company behind ChatGPT.
But to be clear, Bing Chat is not powered by ChatGPT.
ChatGPT is another chatbot.
But both Bing Chat and ChatGPT are powered by the same technology developed from OpenAI.
Understood?
What’s more, Bing Chat can pull from more recent web sources, and it’s supposed to
be able to follow instructions and handle tasks in a more nuanced way.
With that said, let’s learn how to access Bing Chat.
First, Bing Chat works with the Microsoft Edge browser.
So, you’ll have to be using Microsoft Edge in order to use Bing Chat.
If you don’t have Edge, you can easily download it for free.
You can head to bing.com/new and download the new version of Microsoft Edge for your
computer.
And you might be wondering, do you have to have a Microsoft account to use Bing chat?
And the answer is, at least as of right now, yes.
But once you have Edge downloaded, there are a couple of ways to access Bing Chat.
In the Edge browser, head over to bing.com or again, bing.com/new.
From Bing.com/new you’ll click on the chat now button.
From bing.com, you can click on the ‘chat’ tab in the top.
This will open a new Bing Chat browser tab.
Finally, also from bing.com, or another tab, you can hover over the “Discover” icon
in the top-right of the sidebar.
This will bring up your Bing Chat in the right-hand panel, which we’ll touch on later.
By the way, Bing Chat has also been recently integrated into the search bar in Windows
11.
You can also access Bing Chat from your mobile device via the Edge and Bing apps.
And, this will allow you to use your voice to ask questions and have responses spoken
back to you.
So now let’s learn how to use Bing Chat and how it works.
And by the way, I’m going to focus this tutorial on how to use Bing Chat using the
Edge browser on desktop, since once you understand how it works, you can apply that same knowledge
to mobile.
When you first use Bing Chat, it’s going to look very similar to what you might be
used to in ChatGPT or Bard.
You’ll have some examples of what you can ask Bing Chat, but underneath that, you can
choose a conversation style.
So this is pretty interesting.
By default, it’s set to more balanced.
I’ll leave it here for now and maybe we can compare that later.
So let’s use the conversation bar at the bottom to enter in a prompt and see how well
Bing Chat does.
I’ll search for 40th birthday party-themed drink names.
And in about 4 seconds, Bing Chat has pulled up some popular cocktail names to use for
a 40th birthday.
What’s really interesting here, is that we’re also given little footnotes, citing
where Bing Chat has pulled this information from.
So we can click on one of the footnotes to be taken directly to that website.
Back in Bing Chat, we can provide feedback on the response by using the like or dislike
buttons, we can share the response, or we can click on more to copy the response.
What’s more, underneath the response, Bing Chat gives suggestions for additional related
questions.
You can click on one of the related questions to use that as a prompt.
Here, not only has Bing Chat responded to that related prompt, but in this case, it’s
pulling up a preview of images related to that prompt.
So this is really handy to visualize this, and of course, we can just click to see all
images in a new tab.
Now we’ll start a new search topic, but be sure to stay tuned for some crucial information
on what happens to your chat history every time you start a new chat or close your tab.
Hint hint.
To start a new topic in Bing Chat, just click on ‘new topic’ on the bottom left.
Here, your chat clears for you, where you can start a new topic thread and or change
the conversation style.
So let’s quickly go through just a few other examples of what Bing Chat can do.
I’m going to set the conversation style to creative for this prompt.
And here, let’s ask Bing Chat to write an email newsletter promoting my new merch line.
The merch features sayings like Techie, Talk Techie To Me, and Custodean.
Let’s see how Bing Chat does with this.
Ok so especially given the fact that I really didn’t give Bing Chat much information in
this prompt, it’s created a decent email newsletter that I could easily build off of.
But underneath here, let’s hit ‘Can you make some changes to the email'?
And look at this, it’s asking me if I want to change the subject line, add a discount
code or remove a design.
So I could pick any of these or write my more specific response below.
So you can see how we can go back and forth here and you can draw out more precise responses.
So let’s see if Bing Chat can help us plan a road trip.
I’ll once again start pretty broad, just asking if it can help me get from Phoenix
to Santa Monica.
So, here it’s telling me about how long the drive is in miles and how long it’ll
take - and this is pretty darn accurate, I will say.
So, Bing Chat is already asking me if I have specific interests or preferences on this
road trip.
Which is great.
And it’s already anticipated that I’m going to ask it about food en route.
What can I say, it knows me well.
Alright, so I’m going to click on this food prompt.
And in just a few seconds, it’s pulled up some great options of where to eat along the
way and now it even wants to get more specific on the type of food.
Love it.
So, ya, ok, let’s find fish joints because I really like salmon, Bing Chat.
Ah, and here we go, this is a place in Santa Monica and it’s pulled up its address for
me, along with other random options below.
Alright, at the risk of this being way too long of a video, I wanted to test Bing Chat
and see if it could write up a contract for an independent contractor for my business.
I gave a couple of specifics, however, it was unable to help a girl out.
Instead, it turned up some prompts to help me with what should be included in an independent
contractor agreement.
Better than nothing, but not overly helpful.
If you want to know which, if any, chatbots actually excelled with this task, you’ll
want to watch my ChatGPT vs Bard video via the link in the description below.
Do you think any of the chatbots could do it for me?
Comment below.
Regardless, you can kind of get a feel for how Bing Chat is like a suped-up version of
a search engine.
This brings us to some important information user information you need to know about Bing
Chat.
Bing Chat was limiting users to only 5 responses per topic and capping chats at 50 questions
per day.
However, as of when I shot this at the end of March, users now get 20 queries and 20
responses per topic thread.
After that, you’ll have to hit the ‘new topic’ button to start a new thread.
Additionally, something else that’s a neat little feature is that you can just scroll
down on your chat screen to instantly be taken to a search tab.
Now, sometimes this feature is helpful and other times, it just kept bringing me to my
original search for the day.
But once it’s fully functional, it’ll be a handy shortcut.
And by the way, you just scroll back up to get back to your chat screen, with the chat
intact.
Something else for you to explore in Bing Chat is that discover panel on the right that
I mentioned briefly at the top of this video - I know, it’s been a while.
So, from any tab in your Edge browser, if you click on the Discover icon in the top
right, a side panel will pop out where you can start a chat right from there.
Plus, you’ll have additional compose options, where you can customize the tone, format,
and length of the content.
Additionally, there is an insights tab, that gives you links to more information on your
previous search queries and chats.
And speaking of chats - remember how I told you to stay tuned for crucial information?
Well, here it is.
If you’re wondering, hey, does Bing chat save your conversations?
As of right now, no.
I repeat, there is no way to save your conversations.
You can however see your search queries.
So this is just like Bard, in that sense.
From your chat, head to the hamburger menu icon near the top right.
From there, click on search history.
Here, your activity will be shown.
However, be aware that some of my searches from this day are for some reason, missing
from this list!
Don’t know why.
You can delete searches from here too, by the way.
However, if you want to save a response you get from Bing Chat, you need to copy that
out at the time you’re given the response because the moment you close the tab or start
a new search, blamo, your previous chats are history.
Hopefully this changes in the future, but it’s just how it is right now.
And before I leave you, remember, that whether you’re chatting with Bing Chat or your chatbot
of choice, be as specific as possible with your prompts to get the most out of the responses.
Remember, I’ve got links in the description below to ChatGPT and Bard content if you just
can’t get enough.
So that’s how to use Bing Chat.
What do you think of Bing Chat?
Have you tried it?
Let everyone know in the comments below.
As always, thank you so much for watching.
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Thanks for watching, see ya next time.