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On May 4, 2023, Microsoft moved Bing Chat from Limited Preview to Open Preview and removed its waitlist. Anyone who could sign in to Bing with a Microsoft Account could try the expanded preview, although access and features still varied by rollout. Microsoft announced richer visual answers, Image Creator language support, chat history, exports, Edge productivity tools and a future platform for plugins and actions—not a finished, universally identical product.
What Microsoft announced on May 4, 2023
Microsoft’s announcement described the next phase of Bing and Edge as a broader, more visual and more useful search experience. The central change was access: Bing Chat was no longer limited to people accepted from a queue. Microsoft said users could try the Open Preview by signing in with a Microsoft Account.
This was an expansion of the Bing Chat preview that began in February 2023, not the chatbot’s initial launch. Microsoft also said it would continue making weekly changes based on feedback. The announcement is documented in Microsoft’s May 4, 2023 announcement.
What “Open Preview” meant
“Open Preview” meant that Microsoft removed the waitlist and opened the test to a much wider audience. It did not mean Bing Chat had reached a final, generally available release.
- No waitlist: users could attempt access without joining a queue.
- Microsoft Account required: the announcement directed people to sign in with one.
- Staged availability remained: Microsoft could enable features at different times for different accounts, browsers, devices or regions.
- Preview behavior continued: interface changes, limits and answer quality could change as Microsoft tested the service.
Therefore, “available to everyone” accurately describes the removal of the queue, but not identical access on every platform or an assurance that every announced feature was live immediately.
The features Microsoft announced
Richer visual answers
Bing Chat was to provide more than paragraphs of text, including images, videos, charts, graphs, updated formatting, Knowledge Cards and inline visual elements. The aim was to make answers easier to scan and better suited to searches where a picture or comparison communicates more than prose.
Microsoft’s subsequent release notes documented inline images in chat answers. Selecting an image could open a Knowledge Card with additional information. The May rollout also added visual improvements for areas such as shopping, weather, finance and automotive queries. See the May 12 release notes.
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Microsoft said Bing Image Creator would accept prompts in more than 100 languages, reducing the previous reliance on English prompts. The change was documented in the first follow-up release notes on May 5, alongside formatting improvements. The exact experience could still depend on the account and rollout stage. Details appear in the May 5 release notes.
Chat history
Chat history was intended to let users return to earlier conversations instead of rebuilding context each time. Microsoft’s May 19 notes described saved threads with controls to delete, rename, export or share them. The feature was announced as coming shortly, then rolled out during May.
Export and sharing
Microsoft planned to let people share conversations and export them for reuse, including continuation in Word. The May 19 release notes listed PDF, plain-text and Microsoft Word document export formats. Export improves convenience, but it does not validate the accuracy of generated content.
Charts, tables and better formatting
Bing Chat began generating charts and other visualizations for suitable numerical prompts, such as comparisons or rankings. Earlier formatting updates improved bold text, bullets and tables, accepted requests for paragraphs or numbered lists, and added a separate copy button for code and other formatted blocks. These changes are recorded in the May 5 and May 19 release notes.
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Video answers
Microsoft also promoted richer video answers. Later May notes said some responses could open in a full-screen video overlay, with timestamps where available. This was a staged capability rather than a guarantee that every video-oriented question would produce a video response.
Persistent chats in the Edge sidebar
Microsoft connected Bing Chat more closely to Edge. A conversation could remain available in the Edge sidebar while the user browsed, making it possible to refer to an answer without abandoning the current page. This was part of Microsoft’s effort to turn a single chat into a continuing research and productivity workspace.
Long-document and PDF summarization
Edge Chat was described as gaining better support for long websites and PDFs. Microsoft also discussed sidebar interactions with documents viewed in Edge, including local or private content. These were Edge-specific capabilities, not simply features of Bing’s public web chat.
Edge Actions
Edge Actions were presented as an upcoming way to complete tasks with fewer steps. Microsoft’s example involved finding where a film was available and helping the user play it from the Edge sidebar. The announcement did not establish a mature, universally available action marketplace, nor did it specify every permission, partner, country or confirmation step.
Image upload and visual search
Microsoft said it was beginning work on letting users upload an image and search the web for related information. That was a planned multimodal direction in the May 4 announcement, not proof that full image-upload search was available to every Open Preview user that day.
Plugins and developer integrations
Microsoft positioned Bing as an extensible platform for third-party developers. The announcement pointed toward plugins and integrations, while later Build 2023 context covered a shared plugin platform, Bing Search integration with ChatGPT and Bing integration across Microsoft copilots. Those later developments should not be read as specific plugins being launched for all users on May 4.
Announcement versus rollout
The most important distinction is between what Microsoft said was coming and what users could actually see at a particular moment.
| Capability | Status around May 4, 2023 |
|---|---|
| Waitlist removal | Announced as part of the move to Open Preview. |
| Open Preview access | Announced for users signing in with a Microsoft Account. |
| Richer visual answers | Rolling out and expanding. |
| Image Creator prompts in more than 100 languages | Announced and documented in May 5 notes. |
| Chat history | Announced as coming shortly; documented in rollout notes by May 19. |
| Export and sharing | Announced as coming soon; PDF, text and Word formats documented by May 19. |
| Charts and graphs | Announced and documented in the May 19 notes. |
| Video answers | Announced, then documented in later May rollout notes. |
| Persistent Edge chats | Announced as an Edge rollout capability. |
| Long-document and PDF summarization | Announced as an upcoming Edge improvement. |
| Edge Actions | Announced for the coming weeks. |
| Image upload and visual search | Work beginning; not presented as a complete launch. |
| Third-party plugins | Platform direction and planned capability, with more context supplied later. |
What arrived in the following weeks
May 5: formatting and language support
Microsoft’s first follow-up notes described better use of bold text, bullets and tables, prompt support for structured formatting, a dedicated copy control for code and formatted blocks, and Image Creator support in more than 100 languages. See the May 5 release notes.
May 12: images in chat answers
Inline images and related visual improvements appeared in the next phase of updates, documented in the May 12 release notes.
May 19: history, charts and exports
The May 19 notes documented saved chat threads, delete and rename controls, sharing, export to PDF, text and Word, charts and visualizations, and video overlays. They also described a privacy nuance for conversations involving local or private documents: Microsoft said those conversations would not be recorded in logs or shown in chat history. That statement applies to the behavior described in Microsoft’s notes, not a blanket guarantee about every Bing Chat conversation.
What users needed to try the preview
- Open Bing or a compatible Bing/Edge experience available to your account.
- Sign in with a Microsoft Account, as required by Microsoft’s May 4 announcement.
- Try the chat and Edge features offered to that account; controls could appear at different times during the staged rollout.
- If a history, export or visual option was missing, treat that as a possible rollout difference rather than assuming the account was misconfigured.
Because this was a 2023 preview, old menu names and locations should not be treated as current instructions for today’s Bing or Edge interfaces.
Limitations and risks
- Preview instability: features, limits and interface behavior could change weekly.
- Uneven access: web Bing, Edge, mobile apps and the Edge sidebar could receive capabilities at different times.
- Answer accuracy: generated summaries can be wrong. Citations or links do not prove that the summary, chart or visual interpretation is correct.
- High-stakes use: verify medical, legal, financial, travel and other consequential information against authoritative primary sources.
- Privacy boundaries: Microsoft’s May 19 description of local-document conversations should not be generalized into a guarantee covering all data or all chat modes.
- Task automation: proposed actions and plugins raised unresolved questions about permissions, partner coverage, geography, confirmation and what happens when an action chooses the wrong service or product.
Microsoft also described safeguards for misinformation, harmful content, data safety and discriminatory content while acknowledging that the preview would continue learning and changing.
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May 4 marked a shift from presenting Bing Chat as a text answer box toward a broader search assistant. Microsoft’s direction combined conversational search with images, charts and video; persistent research sessions through history and Edge; reusable output through export; and eventual task completion through actions and plugins.
The strategy also tied Bing to Microsoft’s wider ecosystem. Edge supplied the sidebar and document context, while later Build announcements connected Bing Search, ChatGPT and Microsoft’s emerging copilot experiences. The announcement therefore mattered less as a single feature launch than as a statement about how Microsoft wanted search, browsers and AI assistants to work together.
The accurate takeaway
Microsoft did remove Bing Chat’s waitlist on May 4, 2023, opening a broader Microsoft Account-based preview. It announced a substantial set of visual, conversational and developer-facing improvements, but availability was staged. Chat history, exports, charts, inline images and video capabilities appeared through subsequent May updates, while Edge Actions, image-upload search and plugins remained future-facing or incompletely specified at the time.
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