Timeline of Microsoft Copilot

This is a timeline of Bing Chat, a chatbot developed by Microsoft, which uses a large language model to generate responses to user input.

Sample questions

The following are some interesting questions that can be answered by reading this timeline:

• What are some reviews comparing Bing Chat with its competitors?
• What are some improvements or enhancements that Bing Chat has undergone?
  • Sort the full timeline by "Event type" and look for the group of rows with value "Upgrade".

Big picture

Time period	Development summary
February 2023	Bing Chat is announced
March 2023	Microsoft integrates OpenAI's DALL-E AI-based image generator into Bing Chat.
April 2023	Microsoft makes various improvements to Bing Chat, including image and video search, increased chat turn limits, enhanced local search results, and addresses issues in the Edge Sidebar. They introduce AI functionality to the SwiftKey keyboard for Android and suggest using Bing Chat for investment research. Updates include LaTeX support, reduced conversation termination triggers, and improved news grounding. Bing Chat is compared to ChatGPT, with Bing Chat utilizing GPT-4 for accuracy and visual processing, while ChatGPT requires an upgrade. Bing Chat has a daily conversation limit, while ChatGPT has an hourly query limit and lacks internet access for fact-checking.
May 2023	Bing Chat is made available to everyone without waitlist, offering features like image and video results, persistent chat, and plug-in support. Bing Chat's rapid growth causes server capacity issues, leading to slow experiences. Microsoft introduces new features to Bing Chat, including saving and resuming chats, customization, sharing on social platforms, improved Image Builder tool, visual answers with charts and tables, summarization, and integration with Edge actions. Bing Chat also increases its character limit. Microsoft announces Windows Copilot, an AI assistant integrated into Windows 11, and adds anchor text hyperlinks to Bing Chat's answers.
June 2023	Bing Chat increases its turn limit to 30 chats per session, aiming to improve usability. The cap is imposed due to reports of inaccurate responses and rude behavior from the chatbot. Other new enhancements include expanded support for Bing Image Creator in all chat modes and improved visual results for travel-related queries. Microsoft launches a marketing campaign to showcase Bing Chat's potential and provide lessons on effective usage. Additionally, Bing Chat adds Voice Chat on Desktop, supporting voice input and text-to-speech answers. In a benchmark platform by UC Berkeley, Bing Chat and ChatGPT Plus are ranked among the top chatbots using GPT-4.

Full timeline

Year	Month and date	Event type	Details
2023	January 23	Prelude	Microsoft and OpenAI announce the third phase of their partnership through a multiyear, multibillion dollar investment to accelerate AI breakthroughs and ensure these benefits are broadly shared with the world. Microsoft is expected to increase its investments in the development and deployment of specialized supercomputing systems to accelerate OpenAI’s independent AI research. Additionally, Microsoft would deploy OpenAI’s models across its consumer and enterprise products and introduce new categories of digital experiences built on OpenAI’s technology. As OpenAI’s exclusive cloud provider, Azure would power all OpenAI workloads across research, products, and API services.
2023	February 7	Product launch	Microsoft initiates the release of a significant revamp to Microsoft Bing, which involves introducing a novel chatbot functionality powered by OpenAI's GPT-4.
2023	March 16		Microsoft's Chief Communications Officer Frank X. Shaw provides some starter prompts for communicators to use the new AI-powered Bing. Shaw highlights that Bing is in preview at the time and can assist in media interview prep, media coverage snapshots, social media post inspiration, and headline generation. Bing is capable of generating 10 interview questions in the voice of a specific person, provide quick snapshots of media coverage, brainstorming ideas for social media posts, and creating engaging headlines.
2023	March 21	Product launch	Microsoft executive Yusuf Mehdi announces the launch of Bing Image Creator and other visual enhancements for the new Bing and Microsoft Edge. Bing Image Creator allows users to generate images by describing them in words within the Bing chat experience. By this time, Microsoft has collaborated with OpenAI to ensure responsible use and has implemented safeguards to prevent harmful image generation. In addition to Image Creator, Microsoft introduces AI-powered Visual Stories and updated Knowledge Cards. Bing Image Creator starts being rolled out gradually to preview users.
2023	April 1	Upgrade	Microsoft makes several improvements to Bing Chat, including adding image and video search, increasing the maximum number of chat turns per session to 20 and per day to 200, and enhancing local search results. Users can now find locations and businesses near them more easily. Microsoft also addresses issues and gaps in Bing Chat within the Edge Sidebar, such as bringing context enhancements to summarize larger pages and documents, supporting Bing Image Creator in Creative mode, and improving the loading speed of the sidebar.
2023	April 6	Upgrade	Microsoft introduces AI functionality to the beta version of the SwiftKey keyboard for Android through Bing Chat AI integration. Users can now access Bing Chat to generate text, engage in conversation, and use Microsoft's search engine directly from the keyboard. Additionally, the latest SwiftKey beta allows users to have sections of text rewritten by AI with different tones. The availability of these features for iOS users is not specified yet. The beta version of Microsoft SwiftKey can be downloaded from Google Play.
2023	April 10		An article suggests using BingChat as a tool to evaluate investors like Berkshire Hathaway co-chairman Charlie Munger, and enhance investment research. BingChat can provide immediate answers to various questions and save research time. By asking questions like "Explain Company X in terms of a Mental Model," users can gain insights into different aspects of a company's operations and performance. Additionally, maintaining a checklist of mental models can help assess companies effectively. According to the article, using BingChat and incorporating mental models can provide a competitive advantage in evaluating companies.
2023	April 21	Upgrade	Microsoft introduces several updates to Bing Chat, including the addition of LaTeX support for accurately displaying complex mathematical expressions. User feedback leads to improvements in reducing end-of-conversation triggers, ensuring conversations are not prematurely terminated. Bing Chat has also enhanced its news grounding, providing more informed answers to news-related queries. In addition to these updates, Microsoft has made bug fixes and technical improvements to improve the overall user experience.
2023	April 27	Competition	An article compares Bing Chat with ChatGPT. It describes one notable difference between the two chatbots, which is the technology they use. ChatGPT is powered by the GPT-3.5 LLM (Large Language Model), while Bing Chat utilizes the newer GPT-4 LLM. Microsoft claims that GPT-4 is more accurate and capable, offering creative replies, longer memory of conversations, and the ability to process visual queries. While Bing Chat integrates GPT-4 for free, ChatGPT requires a paid upgrade to access this feature. Both chatbots have limitations. Bing Chat has a daily conversation limit due to past incidents of unexpected responses after prolonged interactions. ChatGPT, on the other hand, does not impose such limits but has an hourly query limit. Additionally, ChatGPT is limited to information available until 2021 and cannot access the internet for fact-checking, whereas Bing Chat can retrieve information online. The article concludes that Bing Chat excels in accuracy and concise responses, while ChatGPT offers deeper and more expressive writing.
2023	May 4	Product launch	Microsoft makes Bing GPT-4 chatbot available to everyone without the need for a waitlist. Users can access the preview version by signing in to Bing or Edge with their Microsoft account. The new version is powered by GPT-4 and includes smart features such as image and video results, persistent chat and history, and plug-in support. By this time, Microsoft is also reportedly working with OpenTable and WolframAlpha to enable their plug-ins for restaurant bookings and generating visualizations, respectively.
2023	May 6	Competition	An article compares ChatGPT to Bing Chat, announcing a list of new features that are comparable to what ChatGPT offers to its paid subscribers. The author concludes that ChatGPT Plus is not worth the money and OpenAI needs to rethink its approach to charging for ChatGPT.
2023	May 7	Growth	Bing Chat reportedly experiences rapid growth, surpassing the capacity of its servers to handle the increasing demand. As a result, some users encounter slow and laggy experiences. Mikhail Parakhin, the CEO of Microsoft Bing Search, acknowledges the issue on Twitter, apologizing for the latency and explaining that the company is struggling to add GPUs quickly enough to keep up with usage growth. At this time, the resource-intensive nature of AI solutions poses unique challenges that go beyond traditional web applications, even for a company like Microsoft with vast web management and cloud hosting capabilities.
2023	May 10	Competition	An article compares Open-source HuggingChat with Bing Chat and ChatGPT. It concludes that, at the time, HuggingChat falls short compared to ChatGPT and Bing Chat, with typos, limited data, and misunderstandings. HuggingChat's transparency remains its main advantage. The articleconcludes that ChatGPT is versatile but lacks real-time information, while Bing Chat is connected to the internet but has stricter restrictions.
2023	May 11	Upgrade	Microsoft introduces new features and enhancements to Bing Chat. The updates include the ability to save chats and resume them later, chat customization based on previous conversations, sharing chats on social platforms, improvements to the Image Builder tool, more visual answers with charts and tables, summarization of long content such as articles and web pages, and the integration of Edge actions to complete tasks.
2023	May 17	Upgrade	Microsoft rolls out new features for Bing Chat, including a Bing widget for mobile phones that allows direct access to the AI chatbot from the home screen. The widget becomes available for both Android and iOS devices. Additionally, Microsoft introduces seamless chat continuation across different platforms, enabling users to have consistent conversations with Bing AI on their computer and mobile devices. The company also announce enhancement of Microsoft Swiftkey, its AI-powered keyboard, by adding a "Compose" button that generates drafted text based on user preferences. The Compose button is rolled out gradually for Android and iOS devices. Microsoft Edge Mobile is reported to receive contextual chat capabilities, enabling users to interact with webpage content using Bing Chat and ask questions or obtain summaries.
2023	May 20	Upgrade	Bing Chat increases its character limit from 2,000 to 4,000 characters, allowing for longer questions or queries to be posed to the bot. The higher character limit provides users with more flexibility and room to express their queries in Bing Chat.
2023	May 23	Product launch	Microsoft announces the introduction of Windows Copilot, an AI "copilot" aimed to be integrated into Windows 11. This AI assistant, powered by Microsoft's Bing Chat, has its own dedicated side panel and provides personalized answers, assists with actions within Windows, and interacts with open apps contextually. The Copilot leverages plugins available for Bing Chat to improve productivity, facilitates collaboration, and support complex projects. The Windows Copilot is reported to be available as a preview for Windows 11 starting in June. Additionally, Microsoft reportedly creates an "AI Hub" in the Microsoft Store, featuring AI-driven apps and experiences, including AI-generated review summaries compiled from application reviews.
2023	May 30	Upgrade	Bing Chat introduces a new feature that includes anchor text hyperlinks within its answers. Previously, citations and answers were displayed in the footer of the response. Now Bing Chat generates actual HTML hyperlinks as part of its responses. The anchor text-based hyperlinks enhance the visual presentation of the answers. An example of this implementation was shared on Twitter, receiving positive feedback from users.
2023	June 1	Upgrade	Bing Chat increases its turn limit to 30 chats per session, in an effort to enhance usability. Initially, there were no limits on the tool; however, due to reports of inaccurate responses and rude behavior from the chatbot, Microsoft imposed a cap on its engagement. The increased turn limit of 30 chats per session and 300 chats per day is significant for users who rely on Bing Chat for generating in-depth and extensive content. This update follows the open preview release of Bing Chat, where Microsoft also eliminated the requirement of a Microsoft Account to access the chatbot, except for one major setback.
2023	June 5	Upgrade	Bing Chat introduces several other enhancements. Bing Image Creator, a feature introduced in March, initially limited to Creative mode, becomes available in all chat modes, including Precise and Balanced modes. This expanded support enables users to generate customized images based on their requests within the chat. Additionally, travel-related queries within Bing Chat now yield more visual results, presenting users with relevant images and accompanying links for further information from Bing Travel.
2023	June 6	Marketing campaign	Microsoft launches a new marketing campaign for Bing Chat, with aims to showcase its potential and provide lessons on how to use it effectively. Microsoft highlights the success of Bing Chat so far, with half a billion chats and over 200 million images created using Bing Image Creator. Despite this, Microsoft acknowledges that many users have not fully explored the service's capabilities. The campaign includes videos demonstrating how to use Bing Chat's creative mode for various purposes, such as writing a funny bridesmaid speech or learning to cook a specific dish.
2023	June 9	Upgrade	A blog post on Bing announces addition of Voice Chat on Desktop. The blog mentions that previously announced features are being shipped and that user feedback is being considered. The Release Notes inform users about the features that have been shipped and are now available to everyone. Voice Chat on Desktop allows users to use voice input for chat by clicking on the microphone icon in the Bing Chat box. Multiple languages, including English, Japanese, French, German, and Mandarin, are supported at the time, with more languages to come. Users are encouraged to try out the feature by asking Bing Chat questions like "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" Additionally, Bing Chat starts supporting text-to-speech answers, with Bing Chat responding in its own voice. Users can use voice input to ask questions like "What's the toughest tongue twister you know?".
2023	June 16		Microsoft introduces a new widget for Bing Chat on iPhone and iPad, allowing users quick access to the chatbot from their home screen. The widget comes in two versions, one with a simple search bar and background, and another with dedicated buttons for Chat and voice search. In addition to the widget, Bing Chat expands its voice support to include 38 additional languages, including Spanish, Italian, Hindi, and Korean. Microsoft continues to make frequent updates and improvements to Bing Chat, indicating their ongoing commitment to enhancing the platform.
2023	June 22	Competition	The University of California, Berkeley launches a benchmark platform called the Chatbot Arena to compare different AI chatbots. Users can test two randomized models by providing a prompt and selecting the best answer without knowing which chatbot is behind it. The results are used to rank the chatbots based on an Elo rating system. At the time, OpenAI's GPT-4 is ranked first, followed by Claude-v1 developed by Anthropic. Bing Chat and ChatGPT Plus, which use GPT-4, are considered the best chatbots available. Google Bard's submodel, PaLM-Chat-Bison-001, is ranked eighth.

Visual data

Google trends

The image shows Google Trends data for "Bing AI chat (software)" from January 2023 to May 2023, as well as interest by region.

Meta information on the timeline

How the timeline was built

The initial version of the timeline was written by Sebastian.

Funding information for this timeline is available.

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