• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, March 26, 2024

Microsoft has been pushing to integrate generative artificial intelligence (GAI) into all of its products.

It reintroduced Bing Search with AI-powered features in February 2023, adding a Bing Search and Copilot option in the header of its app. But reorganizations across business units and new executive appointments seem to signal the company is preparing for something bigger — much bigger.

Changes taking place could indicate a major shift in the company to eliminate the Bing Search brand for a more integrated name such as Copilot Search.

Although I have no inside information on this possible change, it seems logical to not have Bing Search and Copilot when the engines essentially do the same thing.

There is still work to do. Microsoft would not make the change until it could ensure a solid advertising structure for brands, in my opinion.

Others also have the same perspective. Bing never really had the loyalty of consumers as a go-to option, but Copilot as a brand did at launch, an industry executive told Search & Performance Insider.

“They still have not put all of the ad businesses together,” the executive said.

Microsoft has Microsoft Advertising -- which now represents the Xbox inventory -- as well as the Xandr marketplace business, which rebranded. However, it remains separate from Bing Advertising, separate from the Activision business, and completely separate from LinkedIn Ads, the executive said.

“I hope they will pull all the assets together, so the value also pulls together the data in Azure,” the executive said.

The demand for AI is expected to rise at a 43% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) and the generative AI market is poised to reach $1.3 trillion by 2032, according to a Bloomberg Intelligence report.

Training AI models will likely grow faster in the near term and could reach $470 billion by 2032, the data shows.

The use of semiconductor accelerators should broaden as more companies ramp up investments in building their own large-language models (LLMs) similar to Meta’s Llama, Alphabet’s Gemini, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. 

The executive changes announced during the past week started with Microsoft naming Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of Google's DeepMind, executive vice president and CEO of its consumer AI business unit.

Suleyman now reports to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and will oversee a range of projects, including the integration of AI Copilot into Windows and adding conversational features into the Bing search engine.

Today, Microsoft confirmed today Mikhail Parakhin is stepping down from his role as the head of Bing Search and Microsoft Advertising, but a statement and internal memo did not state whether he will transition to a new role within or outside the company.