Microsoft to bring Bing Chat to Chrome, Safari. Is it bad news for ChatGPT app?

Microsoft has announced that Bing Chat will soon be available on third-party browsers, such as Google Chrome and Apple Safari, on both the web and on mobile phones. The AI-powered chatbot has so far been available either through Bing’s website or Microsoft Edge browser, but the company is expanding its availability to make sure the ChatGPT-like generative AI chatbot reaches far and wide.

The announcement comes months after select users reported seeing Bing Chat in third-party browsers, hinting that the company was testing support. With the rollout on third-party web browsers, Microsoft is aiming to compete with other generative AI-based chatbots, including ChatGPT and Google Bard. Since Google Bard is still in the expansion phase, it is ChatGPT that Bing Chat will be competing against.

Will it be a threat to ChatGPT?

Moreover, ChatGPT is the only AI chatbot service that is available on multiple platforms, including its apps for Android and iOS. As Bing Chat becomes available on Google Chrome and Safari, it should be accessible as easily as ChatGPT on a mobile device. Since Bing Chat integrated the Bing search engine’s capabilities to index the web, users may find it more lucrative than ChatGPT, which works on trained language models and cannot scour the internet for real-time information.

“This next step in the journey allows Bing to showcase the incredible value of summarised answers, image creation, and more, to a broader array of people,” Microsoft said in its announcement, which also celebrates the sixth anniversary of Bing. “You’ll get most of the great benefits of Bing and we’ll continue to optimise along the way to meet your needs across different browsers.”

But even though Microsoft is adding support for third-party browsers, it insists that the best experience of using Bing Chat can be found in the Microsoft Edge browser in what looks like an attempt to encourage users to keep using the company’s Chromium-based web browser. Not just that, Microsoft is reportedly restricting Bing Chat on third-party browsers to make sure the experience on them remains underwhelming. Users who could use Bing Chat on third-party browsers such as Google Chrome or Safari said that Bing Chat supported only five messages per conversation instead of 30 and limited the character count to 2,000 instead of 3,000.