Late last month, reports indicated that Microsoft has extended the availability of its Bing AI to other browsers beyond just its own Edge. Now, the company has officially announced third-party browser support for its generative AI tool. No specific browser was named, though the company did say that it will be for “web and mobile”, with the former probably meaning desktops and laptops.
The announcement was made as part of the Microsoft Bing blog, celebrating six months of the generative AI tool’s availability, limited though the initial phase may be. The section at the end of the post, aptly named “Newest features” is where the details can be found. As mentioned, though no specific browser was named, it is more than likely that Google Chrome and Safari will be among those getting support. There’s hope for Mozilla Firefox yet, one browser that did not make an appearance in prior reports.
Despite extending Bing AI to other browsers, Microsoft mentions that the best experience will still be on its own Edge browser. The company says that its own browser will allow for “longer conversations, chat history, and more Bing features built right into the browser”. Which, on the flip side, likely means the same 2,000 character limit on other browsers and five messages per conversation that was previously reported.
Also mentioned as part of these new Bing AI features is dark mode. Though for this, Microsoft specifically mentions availability for the Bing mobile app and desktop browser. As we don’t have access to this yet – attempts to do this kept bringing up prompts to either switch to the Edge browser or the dedicated mobile app – we could not test if this is something that’s also extended to mobile browsers. And on that note, the company did say that it is rolling out its third-party browser support “soon”, so it may take a few weeks before it becomes available to everyone.
(Source: Microsoft)
