Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Can Microsoft Make Bing a Thing?

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

Microsoft, stop trying to make fetch happen. Nicole gives you the download on the biggest news coming out of Wall Street, so you can make your finances benefit from the headlines.

Money rehabbers, you get it. When you're trying to have it all, you end up doing a lot of juggling. You have to balance your work, your friends, and everything in between. So when it comes to your finances, the last thing you need is more juggling. That's where Bank of America steps in. With Bank of America, you can manage your banking, borrowing, and even investing all in one place. Their digital tools bring everything together under one roof, giving you a clear view of your finances whenever you need it. Plus, with Bank of America's wealth of expert guidance available at any time, you can feel confident that your

money is working as hard as you do. So why overcomplicate your money? Keep it simple with Bank of America, your one-stop shop for everything you need today and the goals you're working toward tomorrow. To get started, visit bofa.com slash newprosmedia. That's b-o-f-a dot com slash n-e-w pros p-r-o-s media. bfa.com slash newprosmedia. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. Here at Money Rehab, we are all about hunting down the best money news stories for you, our dear listener. As you know, I am not afraid to ask the tough questions or dig deep. This week, my reporting took me to a place I never thought I would go again. A deep, dark place from a forgotten time before.

That's right. I went to Bing. Now, I remember when Bing first launched. By the time it dropped, we were all pretty deep in the Google software ecosystem. Microsoft tried to make Bing happen by making it the default search engine within the Microsoft system. The result? For years, the top search on Bing was Google. That's right, people used Bing mostly to get to the search engine they actually wanted. But now Microsoft is trying to make Bing competitive by adding a chatbot feature. To be clear, we don't have access just yet to the version of Bing with all the new chatbot features. The bot calls itself Sydney, if you want to be polite about it. So you or I couldn't chat with Sydney directly, at least not yet. As a side note, why are all of

these bot systems female? Alexa, Siri, Sydney. Is Silicon Valley admitting that women do have their shit together more than men? I digress. But I did go look at Bing, and I can report that it is fine. It's totally fine. When I searched for business stories, it gave me a pretty good list of articles from across the internet. And interestingly, it was a different list than what came up on Google using the same search terms. And interestingly, it was a different list than what came up on Google using the same search terms. And interestingly, it was a different list than what came up on Google using the same search terms. However, despite a pop-up window promising that Bing could answer complete sentences, when I searched for what are the top business news stories

of the week, Bing gave me a bizarre collection of links. The second hit, for example, was from CTV News, the Canadian television network. Now, Google didn't do much better. It didn't pull up any stories at all, but it did pull up links to more traditional business news sources, first like CNBC, Reuters, and the Wall Street Journal. But moving forward, Bing may finally have more to offer users than just being a pit stop on their way to Google. Google's chatbot-enhanced search engine, named BARD AI, has set the bar pretty low. During its rollout last week, it confidently gave incorrect information during a search. The mistake ended up knocking $7 billion off the company's value. The price of shares have struggled to recover ever since. Chatbot-enabled search isn't the only AI making news recently. Since Art.ai first came onto the scene, artists have been struggling with how to either, first, be reimbursed for their artwork

being used to train AI programs, or second, to block their artwork from being used to train art AI. This is a big issue for artists because AI generated images may be in direct competition with the artist and reduce their sales or otherwise damage their brand. A group of artists filed a lawsuit against the creators of art generating AI recently, and Getty Images, the stock photo company, has also filed a lawsuit. In response, a professor at the University of Chicago and his students have developed a program called Glaze, which renders artists' work in a different style at the pixel level so that it confuses the machine while still appearing normal to the human eye, making the artwork difficult

for AI to replicate. Now, if we only had a solution that worked that well for deep fakes. In other tech news, after the balloon incident of last week, the U.S. government has sanctioned several Chinese aerospace companies. While the U.S. government is increasingly taking action against Chinese interests, Americans continue to love deals from China. With a hearty presence at the Super Bowl, the shopping app Timu continues to be in the top free apps in both the Apple and Google app stores.

The Timu app is up there with TikTok and Xi'an. Whatever may be happening at 60,000 feet, within our phones and homes, we are all happy to deal with China, even if their shipping time takes a little longer and the returns process is impossible. Perhaps we're so loyal to Chinese companies these days because inflation has made everything more expensive. Yesterday, the CPI and core CPI numbers came out. They're continuing to slowly drift lower. While they aren't as low as everyone would like them to be, the steady progress is a sign that the Fed's policy of raising rates has been working. Tomorrow, we're going to get a report on household debt numbers. As you can imagine, household debt has been going up. A big factor here is that interest rates have been climbing,

making the total amount owed much higher. This is one of those economic numbers that can really give us a feel for how people are doing. Because not all debt is bad. Having a mortgage, a car loan, or student loans could be all good things. The problem is when the debt level is greater than the average borrower's ability to pay it off. And so that's what I'll be keeping an eye on here. Here's something else we're keeping an eye on and a tip you can take straight to the bank. If you lived in a state that sent out pandemic relief, the IRS is asking you to wait to file your taxes. The IRS doesn't have policies in place for how those checks are going to be counted as

different states sent out different amounts and classified them in different ways. Until they create a better policy, they're asking people to hold off for a bit before filing. Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Lavoie. Our researcher is Emily Holmes. Do you need some money rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your money questions, moneyrehab at moneynewsnetwork.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me. And follow us on Instagram at moneynews and TikTok at moneynewsnetwork for exclusive video

content. And lastly, thank you. No, seriously, thank you. Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.