Microsoft is launching Bing Chat Enterprise, a business-focused version of Bing Chat with data privacy and governance controls. The company is also introducing Visual Search in Bing Chat and new AI features for Azure, revealed at its Inspire 2023 conference this week. In addition, the cloud-based Copilot plan “combines the power of large language models with your data in the Microsoft Graph and Microsoft 365 apps” for a new way of working using only natural language prompts. Currently in early access, Copilot will be priced at $30 per user per month for Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard and Business Premium subscribers.

Available in preview beginning this week, Bing Chat Enterprise “is functionally similar to Bing Chat — answering queries in text as well as with graphs, charts and images,” but it has high level security so customers can feel comfortable using prompts that involve sensitive information, such as new products or comparative analysis to competing goods and services, according to TechCrunch.

With regards to chatbots, like Bing Chat and Google’s Bard, “companies have expressed concerns about confidential data ending up with developers who trained the models on user data,” TechCrunch writes, noting that “Apple restricted the internal use of tools including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft-owned GitHub’s Copilot, following on the heels of Samsung, Walmart, Verizon, Bank of America, JPMorgan and others.”

At Inspire, Microsoft unveiled Visual Search in Bing Chat, allowing images to be uploaded to generate a web search or prompt Bing to provide information about it. “Visual Search in Chat is rolling out now on desktop and the Bing mobile app. Microsoft said it is working to bring this feature to Bing Chat Enterprise,” MediaPost reports.

During the conference, the company also uncorked “a number of new AI features headed to Azure, perhaps the most notable of which is Vector Search” writes TechCrunch, which does a deep dive on the vector approach. Now “available in preview through Azure Cognitive Services, Vector Search uses machine learning to capture the meaning and context of unstructured data, including images and text, to make search faster,” TechCrunch explains.

The pressure to monetize AI is on. “ChatGPT reportedly cost OpenAI tens of millions of dollars to process the millions of prompts people fed into the software in January alone,” while “financial analysts estimate that Bing Chat” relies on “at least $4 billion of infrastructure to serve responses,” according to TechCrunch.

All the news from Microsoft Inspire 2023 can be found here.

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