Bing introduced a number of new search features this week including text-to-speech, expanded intelligent answers, and enhanced visual search.
Text-to-Speech
Bing’s mobile app can now read text in a voice that’s said to be indistinguishable from a human’s. So Bing can speak search results back to users in natural-sounding language.
Bing says its text-to-speech AI has been developed to clearly articulate words with human-like intonation.
Intelligent Answers
Bing sometimes answers queries with ‘intelligent answers,’ which contain multiple pieces of information pulled from different sources.
As a result of advancements in processing power, Bing is now able to provide intelligent answers for harder questions.
“For example, instead of the relatively simple answer to ‘what is the capital of Bangladesh’, Bing can now provide answers to more complex questions, such as ‘what are different types of lighting for a living room’, quicker than before.”
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Visual Search
Bing’s visual search allows users to search using an image. It has been upgraded with the ability to ability to quickly see multiple objects auto-detected within an image.
So a user uploads an image, then Bing scans it and automatically detects the objects within the image. Lastly, Bing conducts searches for visual matches.
In the search results Bing places clickable hotspots over objects in an image, which users can click on to learn more about.