to cut off access to its Internet search data, which it licenses to rival search engines, if they don’t stop using it as the basis for their own artificial intelligence chat products, according to people familiar with the dispute.
The software maker licenses the data in its Bing search index — a map of the Internet that can be quickly scanned in real time — to other companies that offer Web search, such as Yahoo and. In February, Microsoft integrated a cousin of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI-powered chat technology, into Bing. Rivals quickly moved to roll out their own AI chatbots as hype built around the buzzy technology. This week, Google publicly released Bard, its conversational AI product. DuckDuckGo, a search engine that emphasises privacy, introduced DuckAssist, a feature that uses AI to summarise answers to search queries. You.com and Neeva — two newer search engines that debuted in 2021 — have also debuted AI-fuelled search services, YouChat and NeevaAI.
Microsoft has told at least two customers that using its Bing search index to feed their AI chat tools violates the terms of their contract, according to the people, who spoke anonymously because they were discussing a confidential dispute. The Redmond, Washington-based tech company said it may terminate the licences providing access to its search index, the people said.If they were cut off from Microsoft’s index, smaller search engines would have a hard time finding an alternative.