Bing Chat is making its way to mobile browsers.
Microsoft launched Bing Chat in February, letting people have back-and-forth "conversations" with an AI during a search. At launch, however, it was restricted to the Edge Browser. It was later added to the Android and iOS mobile apps for Bing, Edge, and Skype as a preview release, as well as other apps via a Swiftkey integration.
Microsoft then started testing Bing Chat on Chrome and Safari last month, and it's now preparing to launch Bing Chat for third-party browsers on the web and mobile "soon."
“This next step in the journey allows Bing to showcase the incredible value of summarized answers, image creation, and more, to a broader array of people,” Microsoft says.
Of course, Microsoft argues that Edge provides "the best-in-class Bing Chat experience," including longer conversations, chat history, and more built right into the browser. Historically, though, Microsoft hasn't had much luck by restricting its features to its own browser.
Plus, there's an incentive in getting Bing Chat in front of as many eyeballs as possible. Recent browser market share puts Chrome up top with 63.55% of the global market, according to StatCounter, with Edge at just over 5%.
Still, since its launch six months ago, Microsoft says that it’s seen over 1 billion chats and over 750 million images generated using the Bing Chat.
When browser supports expands, meanwhile, users will have access to dark mode as well as multimodal visual search in chat. With the latter, you add a photo you’ve taken into Chat and then ask Bing questions about the photo. According to Microsoft, Bing will be able to understand the context of the image.