How do I access Bing AI?
Bing AI, developed by Microsoft, is a sophisticated tool that powers several key features of the Bing search engine, such as intelligent answers, conversational search, and image search, to name a few. Additionally, Bing AI has been incorporated into several Microsoft products and services, like the Cortana digital assistant, and it’s also available for developers to use via Bing APIs.
In this article, we will focus on how to utilize Bing AI through Microsoft’s Bing APIs for developers.
Bing APIs provide developers with the ability to access Bing’s AI capabilities and integrate them into their own applications. These APIs cover various services like search (Web, Image, Video, News), autosuggest, spell check, and more.
Accessing Bing APIs
To utilize Bing APIs, you need a subscription key, which can be obtained from Azure portal. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do it:
A. Creating an Azure Account
Before you can access the Bing APIs, you need to have a Microsoft Azure account. If you don’t have one, you can create a free account at the Azure website. When signing up, you will need to provide a credit card for identity verification, but you won’t be charged unless you choose to upgrade your account.
B. Subscribing to Bing Search APIs
Once your Azure account is set up, sign in to the Azure portal. Click on ‘Create a resource’. In the ‘New’ window that appears, search for ‘Bing Search v7’. Select it and click on the ‘Create’ button. Follow the prompts to choose your subscription type, resource group, and resource name. Once everything is filled out, click ‘Review + Create’, then ‘Create’ to finalize the subscription.
C. Getting Your Subscription Key
After your Bing Search APIs subscription is active, you can access your subscription keys. Go to ‘All resources’, and click on your Bing Search resource. Under ‘RESOURCE MANAGEMENT’, click on ‘Keys and Endpoint’. Here, you’ll find your subscription keys and endpoint, which you’ll need to make API requests.
Using Bing APIs
Bing APIs are RESTful APIs, which means you can call them using any programming language that allows HTTP requests. Here’s a general idea of how to use the APIs:
A. Making a Request
To make a request, you need to send an HTTP GET request to the API endpoint. The base URL will look something like this: https://api.bing.microsoft.com/v7.0/search.
The query parameters should be included in the URL. For instance, if you’re making a web search for ‘AI’, your URL might look like this: https://api.bing.microsoft.com/v7.0/search?q=AI.
In the headers of the request, include your subscription key like this: Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: your-subscription-key.
B. Handling the Response
The API response will be a JSON object that includes information like web pages, images, videos, news, and more related to your search. You can parse this JSON object in your application to extract the information you need.
Keep in mind that the use of Bing APIs is subject to usage limits, and excessive or inappropriate use may result in your access being throttled or suspended.
Exploring Bing API Features
Each Bing API offers different features powered by Bing AI. For instance, the Bing Search API provides relevant search results from the web, while the Bing Image Search API offers detailed image search results. The Bing Spell Check API utilizes machine learning to correct spelling errors
That’s correct, each Bing API harnesses Bing AI in different ways to deliver a broad spectrum of functionalities. Let’s delve a little deeper into some of these APIs and explore their features:
Bing Search API:
This API, powered by Bing AI, delivers robust and relevant search results from across the web. It returns web pages, images, videos, news, spell suggestions, and more related to a user’s search query. The intelligent ranking algorithm ensures that the most relevant results are displayed first. It also provides safe search options to filter out adult content.
Bing Image Search API:
The Bing Image Search API goes beyond delivering relevant image results for a given search term. Bing AI allows this API to deliver visually similar images and trending images. It can also recognize entities (people, places, or things) within images. This API provides comprehensive details about each image, such as its format, aspect ratio, size, and the website it’s sourced from.
Bing Spell Check API:
Bing AI helps this API detect and correct spelling errors in text. It can handle commonly misspelled words, repeated words, and even recognizes brand names and slang. It uses machine learning to understand the context of a word within a sentence, enabling it to suggest corrections that make sense within that context.
Bing Autosuggest API:
The Autosuggest API uses Bing AI to provide suggestions for search queries as a user types them. These suggestions are based on popular search trends and can help users formulate their queries more effectively.
Bing News Search API:
This API uses Bing AI to search for and return news articles from the web based on the user’s query. It provides a broad range of details for each article, including the title, description, URL, date of publication, and the source of the article.
Bing Video Search API:
The Video Search API uses Bing AI to return a list of videos that are relevant to the user’s search query. For each video, it provides details like the title, description, publisher, creator, date of publication, duration, view count, and thumbnail URL.
Bing Entity Search API:
The Entity Search API utilizes Bing AI to recognize and provide information about entities (like people, places, or things) based on the user’s search query. This can include details like a description of the entity, related entities, and relevant URLs.
These are just a few examples of the Bing APIs that utilize Bing AI to provide intelligent and contextually relevant results. By integrating these APIs into your applications, you can harness the power of Bing AI to enhance your users’ experience.
