Microsoft said on Tuesday that it is integrating artificial intelligence into both its Edge Web browser and Bing search engine in an effort to regain market leadership in the consumer technology space. The company is investing billions of dollars in artificial intelligence as it directly competes with Alphabet Inc.’s Google, which has long been ahead of Microsoft in search and browser technology.

Now an intelligent chatbot will coexist with Bing’s search results and the AI will summarise web pages, synthesise many sources, even create emails and translate them. Microsoft anticipates an additional $2 billion in search advertising income for every percentage point of market share it increases.

“This technology is going to reshape pretty much every software category,” Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella in a briefing at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

After the announcement, Microsoft’s stock closed 4.2% higher on Tuesday, while Alphabet gained 4.6%.

On desktop computers, Microsoft’s new Bing search engine is currently active in restricted preview. It will soon be made available for mobile devices. Microsoft executives stated that the company’s AI may still provide factually incorrect information known as a hallucination, thus it is hoped that user feedback would help it develop. It has continued to work on measures to prevent technology abuse in the interim.

Microsoft’s corporate vice president for search and AI, Jordi Ribas, told the Reuters news agency that the technological advancements his team saw last summer gave the business confidence to proceed with an AI-infused Bing.

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