sel logo
Search Engine Land » SEO »
Ever since Microsoft announced the new Bing AI search and chat experience, they have been mentioning technology called “Prometheus.” Early on, Prometheus was described as a model to power the integration of Bing Search and AI chat. Now, Microsoft explained in more technical detail how Prometheus works to just that.
“We developed a proprietary technology we call Prometheus, which is a first-of-its-kind AI model that combines the fresh and comprehensive Bing index, ranking, and answers results with the creative reasoning capabilities of OpenAI’s most-advanced GPT models,” wrote Jordi Ribas, Corporate Vice President, Search & AI at Microsoft.
Prometheus. Basically, the technology is an AI model that Microsoft created to combine the Bing index, ranking, and answers search results with OpenAI’s GPT models. This makes the ChatGPT models have fresher, almost real-time, content and data to use for its training models.
As I understand it, the Prometheus technology works across Bing in these areas:
Query interpretation. I believe the query interpretation piece might be one of the most fundamental aspects of Prometheus. For example, as I illustrated in this search, Bing Chat AI is taking my long query and breaking it into a shorter query that Bing Search can understand, find the right documents for, plug into ChatGPT and also surface more answers from Bing Search.
Look at how Bing Chat took my query, “why does bing call their ai chat technology prometheus and what does it do?” and made it “bing ai chat technology prometheus.”
Fresh answers. Bing then takes this query, goes through its Bing Search index, which is mind-blowing fast, and gives almost real-time answers.
Here’s an example of an article I wrote last night (about Google releasing the February 2023 product reviews update). It showed up in Bing AI chat within minutes (via Glenn Gabe on Twitter last night):
Bing found the article I published at 5:08 p.m. and responded to Gabe’s query by around 6:30 p.m. – less than 90 minutes later.
Merging chat and search. Microsoft’s blog post then went deeper into how Microsoft Bing thought about the user experience, how to merge the Bing Search product with the Bing Chat product.
“This product or UX innovation is arguably just as important as the Prometheus technology to ensure people can use the product to its full potential in an intuitive way,” Ribas wrote.
Why we care. Understanding that Bing Chat AI leverages so much of the core Bing Search features is useful to know. It gives us hope that some of our basic SEO practices will be even more fundamental and important for how we can help our clients and our own websites rank (if we call it ranking) high in these chat experiences.
“Prometheus is also able to integrate citations into sentences in the Chat answer so that users can easily click to access those sources and verify the information. Sending traffic to these sources is important for a healthy web ecosystem and remains one of our top Bing goals,” is what Ribas wrote in that blog post and we, as publishers, content creators and marketers certainly hope that is true.
Related stories
New on Search Engine Land
About the author
Related topics
Get the daily newsletter search marketers rely on.
See terms.
Learn actionable search marketing tactics that can help you drive more traffic, leads, and revenue.
March 15-16, 2023: SMX Munich
Online Aug. 16-17: SMX Master Classes
Online Nov. 14-15: SMX Next
Start training now: SMX Advanced
Discover time-saving technologies and actionable tactics that can help you overcome crucial marketing challenges.
April 15-17, 2020: San Jose
Become a Data Champion By Mastering Marketing Analytics Automation
Why Consent and Compliance Matter With Programmatic Ads
From Zero to Hero: Apply Pillar-Based Marketing to Your SEO and Digital Campaigns to Drive Revenue
Enterprise Marketing Attribution and Performance Management Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide
Enterprise Account-Based Marketing Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide
Enterprise Marketing Work Management Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide
The Content Marketer’s Funnel
Meet your new AI-powered marketing assistant!
Get the must-read newsletter for search marketers.
Topics
Our events
About
Follow us
© 2023 Third Door Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
Third Door Media, Inc. is a publisher and marketing solutions provider incorporated in Delaware, USA, with an address 88 Schoolhouse Road, PO Box 3103, Edgartown, MA 02539. Third Door Media operates business-to-business media properties and produces events. It is the publisher of Search Engine Land the leading Search Engine Optimization digital publication.
source