Bing has made a lot of bets over the years that haven't really panned out, maybe it will be different this time.
Granted, Microsoft is much less reliant on Bing's ad revenue than Alphabet is on Google's, which might allow Bing to really change the search experience without having to worry too much about selling ads. It's going to be interesting to see how these products evolve in ways that serve both the user and the business interests behind the search results, especially if we start seeing VC backed AI search engines pop up which don't need to focus on existing advertiser revenue.
Well, Microsoft quite literally owns OpenAI (the ChatGPT devs) and they're well-known for adding pointless features to Bing (Bing Rewards, daily wallpaper, overly-formatted results pages, etc).
Even if/when Bing adds AI features, SEO will not be "dead". Not only does nobody use Bing, but the results will be mixed in with traditionally-indexed results. SEO is by-far the easier route to getting your product in search results, considering how hard AI models get pruned.
Granted, Microsoft is much less reliant on Bing's ad revenue than Alphabet is on Google's, which might allow Bing to really change the search experience without having to worry too much about selling ads. It's going to be interesting to see how these products evolve in ways that serve both the user and the business interests behind the search results, especially if we start seeing VC backed AI search engines pop up which don't need to focus on existing advertiser revenue.