As Cortana Retires, Microsoft Brings AI-Powered Bing Voice Mode to Desktop
You can now speak to Microsoft’s ChatGPT-powered Bing on a desktop computer.
Bing Chat's voice mode was previously only available on mobile, but Microsoft today finally brought(Opens in a new window) the feature to desktop users, provided they're using the Edge browser.
Access it by clicking the new microphone button within the query box on the Bing chat function and speaking your request. Bing will respond with a text reply and via voice.
“We currently support English, Japanese, French, German, and Mandarin, with more languages on the way,” Microsoft added.
The voice mode makes the AI-powered Bing even more convenient to use, since you can verbally hear replies from the chatbot while working on other stuff. But you’ll need to hit the microphone button again to ask follow-up questions. For now, it looks like Bing chat can only speak using one (female) voice.
Voice mode arrives as Microsoft is preparing to retire its previous virtual assistant, Cortana, as a standalone Windows app. Cortana debuted in 2014 as a counter to Apple’s Siri voice assistant. But Microsoft plans on shutting down the Cortana Windows app later this year.
As a replacment, Redmond is encouraging users to check out the AI-powered Bing, along with the company's upcoming Copilot assistant, which is arriving for Windows and Microsoft 365. The company continues to limit how many queries you can ask Bing per chat session. But last week, Microsoft raised(Opens in a new window) “the maximum number of turns you can have in a single conversation with Bing Chat from 20 to 30.” The total number of turns per day has also been increased to 300.
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