Microsoft Threatens Data Restrictions In Rival AI Search
- Competing search engines use the software giant’s web index
- Microsoft tells customers it may cut them off, people say
The AI-powered Microsoft Bing search engine and Edge browser.
Photographer: Chona Kasinger/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Microsoft Corp. has threatened 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 Apollo Global Management Inc.’s Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. In February, Microsoft integrated a cousin of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI-powered chat technology, into Bing.