Today, Microsoft’s Bing Chat launched contextual chat for mobile Edge browsers, iOS and Android platforms, and the ability to have an ongoing Bing Chat discussion between mobile and desktop. These are all significant advancements for mobile users.
Users can now start a Bing Chat conversation on a PC and continue it on a mobile device. Microsoft gave the example of asking Bing Chat on a PC to generate a recipe for the user. When the user gets to the grocery store, if a certain item is missing, the user can ask for a substitute on the mobile app. The feature will be rolled out to all iOS and Android users over the next week, starting today.
Contextual chat in Edge for iOS and Android is the second major change for mobile devices. This is very similar to the feature that allows the mobile browser to understand the context of the page the user is browsing. The latter is available in the Bing sidebar on the Edge desktop. The Bing Chat icon is located at the bottom of Edge and allows users to ask questions about the website they are visiting, as well as get a summary of an article or document they are reading. In addition, Edge mobile will enable some text actions that allow users to highlight a section of text and have Bing explain or summarize it. The two new Edge features will be available to mobile users soon, according to Microsoft.
In addition, Microsoft is releasing a mobile widget for Bing Chat that can be pinned to the home screen for iOS and Android users. The widget features a microphone icon and a Bing icon that can be used to access Bing Chat directly. This week, the feature will be available on iOS and Android, and Microsoft is improving language support for its voice input.