OpenAI Search's Partner, Competitor: Microsoft Copilot

Most consumers do not want to admit they like advertising or marketing, but I often find new products from brands that way, from brands or products I had never heard about. It almost seems like a necessary evil.

AI-powered search and advertising will help consumers find new brands, but for the most part it is not because the content is limited to what people have written about. And when only one journalist has written articles about a specific product, brand or service without reviews, the consumer cannot really tell whether that product works as it should.

Microsoft launched Copilot Search in Bing on Friday to offer AI-powered summaries with links to sources and conversational answers.

Jim Yu, founder of BrightEdge, told MediaPost that Microsoft found that people are make buying decisions faster with Copilot -- cutting the average time from 30 days to about 20 days.

"Every AI Search platform, engine or large language model (LLM) is in a race to capture user trust in their results and in the variety of experiences provided," he said. "In Microsoft’s case there is also a big gap in search engine marketer share," he added. "Google dominates with 92% share, and Bing has around 4%. It’s a big overhaul."