Microsoft's Data Lockdown: Threatens to Cut Off Access for Rival AI Search Tools

Bloomberg reported on Friday that the tech giant Microsoft has warned that it will cut off access to its licensed internet-search data if other search engines continue to use it as the basis for their own Artificial Intelligence (AI) chat products, citing people familiar with the dispute.

Bing Search Index Data Off-Limits for AI Chat Tools, Says Microsoft

The search index is a map of the internet that a specific search engine can quickly access when looking for results that are relevant to a specific query.

The Redmond behemoth's Bing search index data is licensed to other web search companies such as Yahoo and DuckDuckGo.

Microsoft integrated OpenAI's AI-powered chat technology into Bing in February, and competitors quickly began incorporating the hot technology into their own products.

DuckDuckGo debuted DuckAssist, a feature that uses artificial intelligence to summarize search query results. You.com and Neeva Inc., two newer search engines that launched in 2021, have also launched AI-powered search services, YouChat and NeevaAI, respectively.

Because indexing the entire web is prohibitively expensive, You.com and Neeva's regular search engines rely on Bing for information. Similarly, gathering data for a search chatbot is costly and time-consuming.

Now, Bloomberg reported that Microsoft has told at least two of its customers that using Bing's search index to fuel their AI conversation tools is a breach of contract, citing people familiar with the issue.

The people, who requested anonymity for the news agency, also stated that Microsoft may revoke the licenses that allow access to its search index.

Because Microsoft and Google are the only two companies that index the entire web, cutting off access to its search index would have a significant impact on smaller search engines, and Google's limitations on the use of its index have led nearly all other search engines to use Bing.

Microsoft's Take on the Issue

Upon Bloomberg's request for a comment on this issue, Microsoft responded, "We've been in touch with partners who are out of compliance as we continue to consistently enforce our terms across the board." The tech giant further added, "We'll continue to work with them directly and provide any information needed to find a path forward."