Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, has recently begun showing “AI-generated stories” in some search engine results pages. These stories are created by artificial intelligence technology and are meant to provide users with some additional context or insights related to their search query.
The stories are listed below result snippets and are easy to distinguish, as they feature a blue link with the sign ‘AI created story’. Upon clicking this link, the user is taken to a short story comprised of content from other sources that are deemed relevant to the query. The story contains a couple of paragraphs of text and a few images, making it a handy way to quickly gather some additional information from various sources.
Microsoft claims that the stories are composed of content from “trusted sources” sifted through by Bing’s AI. The algorithm looks for news articles, videos, Wikipedia pages and other online sources, and then arranges them in a logical narrative. Bing also tries to determine the most relevant and interesting insights that a user may need while looking up the query.
Currently, the AI-generated stories are only available in some English-language search results. Still, Microsoft plans on gradually expanding the feature to more areas, as it expects to improve its ability to identify and provide relevant content. Microsoft’s aim is to provide an easily accessible yet comprehensive overview of information pertaining to relevant topics. For instance, if you type ‘Brexit’ into the search bar, you can see a story that provides an introduction to this subject and some additional context.
The AI-generated stories may prove to be of great help and convenience to those who need to research topics quickly, such as students writing assignments or journalists on deadline. Furthermore, the stories can serve as a confirmation tool, enabling people to quickly check if they’ve got the basic facts on any particular subject right.
Microsoft is certainly taking a bold step forward in its endeavor to bring AI-based capabilities to online search. The AI-generated stories might even become the new ‘Go-To’ tool in searching for information online. We are yet to see how the story ‘search feature’ develops in the future.