Microsoft is preparing to unleash Bing AI on Chrome and Firefox browsers

Bing AI should be available in Edge in other browsers soon, so the army of Chrome users out there could get a piece of Microsoft's chatbot if they so choose.

A new post finds Mikhail Parakhin, head of advertising and web services at Microsoft, telling us more about where Bing AI will be headed in the near future (on Twitter).

This includes "enabling the first experiments with third-party browsers," as you can see from the tweet.

Can't you already get the Bing chatbot in Chrome (or other browsers, for that matter)? No, not really, although there are admittedly workarounds in the form of unofficial extensions (clunky fudges, really) for Chrome and Firefox that keep Bing AI within their walls.

Official support would obviously be better, though, and it's a great way for Microsoft to get more people using chatbots.

In addition to third-party browser support, Parakhin also talked about major improvements to the "disengagement rate," which means healing when a chatbot falls over and becomes unresponsive, thereby abruptly ending the current session.

We're also promising that the Bing image creator will get better, so there are some useful tweaks inbound for Microsoft's AI.

All of this will apparently be part of a larger-than-normal update to Bing AI in June, which will also include a "massive plugin rollout."

In a previous tweet, Parakhin noted: "We're turning everything into one plugin (including different aspects of search!) - and it brings pretty significant metrics improvements."

As we've been told before, the plugin will be available on various platforms, such as Spotify and Trip Advisor, to pick a few quick examples.

Analysis: One pawn to rule them all

The news that the Bing chatbot is coming to other browsers soon, and it's not just a Microsoft Edge exclusive, is great for anyone who doesn't want to use Edge. Of course, that's a fair minority (especially those who might be tired of Microsoft trying to convince them that its browser is great and that it should be the default choice, via a bunch of ads and various prompts within Windows).

The move will also help Microsoft create a broader potential audience for its Bing AI.

It represents a change in strategy, as instead of using chatbots to try to get people to use Edge, Microsoft will work the other way -- bringing more users to AI through Chrome, Firefox, and other browsers. This is of course a key consideration, especially as we see how crazy everything is around artificial intelligence. The artificial intelligence tide is moaning aggressively under the weight of everyone aboard.

The rollout of third-party plugins will also drive adoption of Bing AI, and improvements to reduce the frequency with which chatbots abruptly stop conversations in some cases will no doubt help convince people of the AI's virtues.

Microsoft has removed an important hurdle that may have prevented many people from using its chatbot – the requirement to log in with a Microsoft account (although the AI is more limited if you don’t). All of this underscores the pressure Microsoft is clearly feeling to push the adoption of Bing AI to just about every other service or product it has now.