According to sources, Microsoft has threatened to restrict access to its internet-search data that it licenses to rival search engines if they do not cease using it as the basis for their artificial intelligence (AI) conversation products. Microsoft licenses the data in its Bing search index, a real-time map of the internet, to other companies that do web searches such as Yahoo and DuckDuckGo.
Microsoft included a ChatGPT cousin into Bing last month, and its competitors have already begun to roll out their own artificial intelligence chatbots. Google’s AI tool, Bard, was unveiled this week. DuckDuckGo, which prioritizes anonymity for searchers, developed DuckAssist, which answers inquiries by scanning a select set of sources.You.com, and Neeva Inc., both new search engines, unveiled AI-powered search services YouChat and NeevaAI. These search chatbots try to integrate ChatGPT’s conversational abilities with the information offered by a traditional search engine.
Microsoft and Google are now the only two organizations that index the entire web
Bloomberg reported on Friday that DuckDuckGo, You.com, and Neeva employ Bing to give some of their information because indexing the entire web is expensive. According to sources, Microsoft informed at least two customers that using the Bing search index to feed their AI conversation tools violated the terms of their contract. They also stated that Microsoft may revoke licenses granting access to its search index.
According to the research, if they are removed from the index, smaller search engines will struggle to find an alternative. Microsoft and Google are now the only two organizations that index the entire web. Because of Google’s restrictions on the usage of its index, practically all other search engines now use Microsoft’s Bing.