Bing Gives Chrome and Edge a Toggle for AI Answers — But With a Catch

⚡ The 5-Second Rundown

• Microsoft has released the Microsoft Bing AI Search Choice extension: a single toggle that turns AI answers in search results on and off.
• It works in Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, and is currently in preview.
• The downside: installing it makes Bing your default search engine. An alternative without the extension is the "-ai" operator in every query.

🔍 What Happened

Microsoft has rolled out the Microsoft Bing AI Search Choice extension. It adds exactly one switch to Bing search: whether to show AI answers or not. It's currently a preview version and installs in Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. Reported by Habr.

The mechanics are simple. Install the extension — get a toggle. Pick a mode once, and it sticks for all queries; no need to change it every time. But there's a catch: installing it also makes Bing the default search engine in your browser. For those who just wanted to get rid of AI summaries, that's an unwanted extra.

There's also a path without the extension — appending the "-ai" operator to your query. An example from the article: best laptops 2026 -ai returns regular links without an AI-generated answer. The obvious downside: you have to type the operator with every search.

The same piece also mentions the summer announcement of Web IQ — a set of Bing-based APIs for AI agents. It serves structured data from Bing's global index: billions of documents, over 100 languages and markets. Semantic search there runs through a vector space and an open Microsoft embedding model. Speed is maintained via an enhanced DiskANN: indexes live on disk and aren't loaded into memory in full.

🧠 Our Take

Microsoft itself explains the pivot with research: some people like brief summaries, others want to compare sources themselves. Our assessment — it's not just about love for the classic results page. AI answers eat up link clicks, and questions about their trustworthiness have been piling up for a while. Hence the toggle: it's easier to offer an off switch than to argue.

What does this change for the user? Before, the choice was crude: either Bing with AI, or a different search engine. Now the company offers a lever, but ties it to changing your default search engine. From experience, such "bonuses" with a side effect are more annoying than the feature itself. I'd bet many users will bail right at that screen.

Who wins? Microsoft gets data on how many people actually turn off AI — a valuable product signal. Who loses? Those who wanted fine-grained control without surprises in their browser settings. The "-ai" operator works, but it's a tool for those in the know, not for the average person.

⚠️ What We Don't Know

There are no numbers at all. How many people have turned off AI answers, how Microsoft conducted that very "research," when the extension will leave preview, whether the toggle will appear in Bing's own settings, and what about mobile — not a word. The source's weak spot is that it's a retelling, not documentation. Verify yourself: whether the checkboxes are on by default after installation and whether the search engine changes silently.

Prediction: within a quarter, the toggle will move into Bing's own settings without the extension. If that doesn't happen, some users simply won't install the extension because of the default search engine change.

Disclaimer: a single source — an article on Habr; there's no official confirmation from Microsoft.

Source: Habr