Microsoft threatens to cut-off rival AI chatbots from Bing data

The AI chatbot wars are heating up, apparently. Microsoft is reportedly considering barring other companies from using data from its search engine Bing.

Bloomberg reported that Microsoft has threatened to cut-off two separate Bing-powered search engines if companies don’t stop using the data for their own chatbots. The Bloomberg report did not specify which companies were involved in the dispute, and several search engines rely on Bing, including DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, and You.com.

Sites like DuckDuckGo and You.com license Bing’s search data from Microsoft, to use in a myriad of ways to enhance their own search engine capabilities. However, Bloomberg reports that while Microsoft is fine with how Bing is used currently, the company draws the line at “using Bing’s search index as fodder for AI chatbots.”

It seems like everyone and anyone has an AI chatbot these days with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Microsoft’s Bing Chat. While we do not know which companies were warned by Microsoft, The Verge notes that both DuckDuckGo, You.com, and Neeva have launched AI products of their own.

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Generative AI, and AI chatbots, have been, without a doubt the tech innovation of 2023. And it seems that new capabilities and versions of AI bots launch daily. Bing, for instance, recently launched the ability to generate images via AI. With countless tech giants fighting for supremacy in the emerging field, it makes sense that Microsoft would try to limit other companies access to said data when it comes to the AI field.