Few things make big tech firms more envious or more anxious than not being the centre of attention. All six of the biggest firms – Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple, Netflix and Microsoft – rely on being (and staying) an essential part of consumers' everyday lives. So when one of them launches the Coolest New Toy, the others frequently scramble to follow, even if they're not ready.

The Coolest New Toy in this case is the artificial intelligence bot built into Bing, the search engine owned by Microsoft. Codenamed ‘Sydney’, the bot is powered by Open AI's ChatGPT technology, in which Microsoft is a major investor. Much like ChatGPT, Sydney is adept at understanding and imitating human conversation.