Microsoft Bing Search app downloads increased 10 times after ChatGPT integration was announced

Ashwin
Feb 10, 2023
Microsoft
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Like it or not, A.I. powered tools like ChatGPT and GPT-3 are here to stay. In fact, they are so popular right now, that the announcement of ChatGPT integration saw the Microsoft Bing app being downloaded 10 times more than before.

Microsoft Bing app downloads saw a 10x increase after ChatGPT integration was announced

Everyone is playing with ChatGPT, from making it tell jokes, explain stuff, writing program codes, and more. Even in its early phase, the chatbot is quite useful, more importantly it is easy-to-use, and free. This could change in the future, as we have seen with the ChatGPT Plus subscription that was launched in the U.S. recently.

Image via http://data.ai/

Microsoft Bing app downloads saw a 10x increase after ChatGPT integration was announced

Techcrunch reported that the Microsoft Bing app downloads saw a 10x increase, based on an estimate provided by data.ai.  And indeed, Microsoft Bing Search is actually among the top 10 downloaded apps on the iOS App Store, you can verify it on Apple's website, it's currently sitting at No.6 in the top free iOS apps chart, just a couple of places behind the world's most popular search engine, Google. This is the Bing app's listing page.

Microsoft Bing rises to the top 10 free apps on iOS App Store

If that's shocking, wait till you hear this. Microsoft Bing was ranking (read languishing) way down at 160 in the Productivity apps category, guess where it is now? Right at the top of the charts, it is the #1 app in the list, which you can view here. That's unbelievable, how exactly did this happen?

Microsoft Bing Search is the most downloaded productivity on the iOS app store

A couple of days ago, Microsoft announced support for Open AI's ChatGPT in its search engine Bing, and Edge browser. Google retaliated to Microsoft's move by revealing its own language model called, Bard. That didn't work out quite as expected, as much to the Mountain View company's embarrassment, the A.I. chatbot ended up giving a wrong answer during a live presentation. Let the A.I. wars begin.

Coming back to Microsoft Bing, the fact is, the new Bing with ChatGPT is not available for everyone just yet. There is a waitlist that you have to join before you can access the tool. To try it, go to https://www.bing.com/new.

That's not just what you need to do, there are a few more prerequisites, or hurdles if you will. A Microsoft account is required, and you will need to sign in to it before joining the waitlist. It doesn't support other browsers, the new Bing only works with Microsoft Edge. This is where things take an interesting turn. Microsoft is offering a shortcut for users on the waitlist to get access to Bing powered by ChatGPT quickly.

Microsoft new Bing with ChatGPT join waitlist

First, you will need to change the default web browser on your computer to Microsoft Edge. To make things easier, Microsoft has a tool called WebBrowsingOptimizer.exe. That almost sounds like a virus, doesn't it?  The next step to gain quick access to the new Bing, requires users to scan a QR code on the website, to install the Bing on your Android mobile or iPhone.

Access Microsoft new Bing with ChatGPT faster

The 2nd step, right there, is how the Bing app's download surge began.  Before you go and ahead and install Bing and switch to Edge to jump ahead in the waitlist, I'd recommend reading our previous coverage to learn about the privacy implications related to the apps.

Introduce support for ChatGPT, lock it behind the Bing app, make users download it, grant access to the chatbot, and cash in on the A.I. craze. I got to hand it to Microsoft, that is some incredibly smart marketing. Well played!

Have you tried the new Bing with ChatGPT?

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Microsoft Bing Search app downloads increased 10 times after ChatGPT integration was announced
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Microsoft Bing Search app downloads increased 10 times after ChatGPT integration was announced
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Microsoft Bing Search app saw 10x increase in downloads after ChatGPT integration was announced. Here's how it happened.
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Comments

  1. Some Dude said on March 19, 2023 at 11:42 am
    Reply

    Are these articles AI generated?

    Now the duplicates are more obvious.

    1. boris said on March 19, 2023 at 11:48 pm
      Reply

      This is below AI generated crap. It is copy of Microsoft Help website article without any relevant supporting text. Anyway you can find this information on many pages.

  2. Paul(us) said on March 20, 2023 at 1:32 am
    Reply

    Yes, but why post the exact same article under a different title twice on the same day (19 march 2023), by two different writers?
    1.) Excel Keyboard Shortcuts by Trevor Monteiro.
    2.) 70+ Excel Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows by Priyanka Monteiro

    Why oh why?

    1. Clairvaux said on September 6, 2023 at 11:30 am
      Reply

      Yeah. Tell me more about “Priyanka Monteiro”. I’m dying to know. Indian-Portuguese bot ?

  3. John G. said on August 18, 2023 at 4:36 pm
    Reply

    Probably they will announce that the taskbar will be placed at top, right or left, at your will.

    Special event by they is a special crap for us.

  4. yanta said on August 18, 2023 at 11:59 pm
    Reply

    If it’s Microsoft, don’t buy it.
    Better brands at better prices elsewhere.

  5. John G. said on August 20, 2023 at 4:22 am
    Reply

    All new articles have zero count comments. :S

  6. Anonymous said on September 5, 2023 at 7:48 am
    Reply

    WTF? So, If I add one photo to 5 albums, will it count 5x on my storage?
    It does not make any sense… on google photos, we can add photo to multiple albums, and it does not generate any additional space usage

    I have O365 until end of this year, mostly for onedrive and probably will jump into google one

  7. St Albans Digital Printing Inc said on September 5, 2023 at 11:53 am
    Reply

    Photo storage must be kept free because customers chose gadgets just for photos and photos only.

  8. Anonymous said on September 5, 2023 at 12:47 pm
    Reply

    What a nonsense. Does it mean that albums are de facto folders with copies of our pictures?

    1. GG said on September 6, 2023 at 8:24 am
      Reply

      Sounds exactly like the poor coding Microsoft is known for in non-critical areas i.e. non Windows Core/Office Core.

      I imagine a manager gave an employee the task to create the album feature with hardly any time so they just copied the folder feature with some cosmetic changes.

      And now that they discovered what poor management results in do they go back and do the album feature properly?

      Nope, just charge the customer twice.

      Sounds like a go-getter that needs to be promoted for increasing sales and managing underlings “efficiently”, said the next layer of middle management.

  9. d3x said on September 5, 2023 at 7:33 pm
    Reply

    When will those comments get fixed? Was every editor here replaced by AI and no one even works on this site?

  10. Scroogled said on September 5, 2023 at 10:47 pm
    Reply

    Instead of a software company, Microsoft is now a fraud company.

  11. ard said on September 7, 2023 at 4:59 pm
    Reply

    For me this is proof that Microsoft has a back-door option into all accounts in their cloud.
    quote “…… as the MSA key allowed the hacker group access to virtually any cloud account at Microsoft…..”
    unquote

    so this MSA key which is available to MS officers can give access to all accounts in MS cloud.This is the backdoor that MS has into the cloud accounts. Lucky I never got any relevant files of mine in their (MS) cloud.

  12. Andy Prough said on September 7, 2023 at 6:52 pm
    Reply

    >”Now You: what is your theory?”

    That someone handed an employee a briefcase full of cash and the employee allowed them access to all their accounts and systems.

    Anything that requires 5-10 different coincidences to happen is highly unlikely. Occam’s razor.

  13. TelV said on September 8, 2023 at 12:04 pm
    Reply

    Good reason to never login to your precious machine with a Microsoft a/c a.k.a. as the cloud.

  14. Anonymous said on September 18, 2023 at 1:23 pm
    Reply

    The GAFAM are always very careless about our software automatically sending to them telemetry and crash dumps in our backs. It’s a reminder not to send them anything when it’s possible to opt out, and not to opt in, considering what they may contain. And there is irony in this carelessness biting them back, even if in that case they show that they are much more cautious when it’s their own data that is at stake.

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